What to import to use @SuppressFBWarnings?

Question

What to import to use SuppressFBWarnings? I installed the findbugs plugin via help / install new software When I type import edu., I can't do ctrl space to get the options.

Example

try {
  String t = null;
  @edu.umd.cs.findbugs.annotations.SuppressFBWarnings(
    value="NP_ALWAYS_NULL", 
    justification="I know what I'm doing")
  int sl = t.length();
  System.out.printf( "Length is %d", sl );
} catch (Throwable e) {
...
}

Has error "edu cannot be resolved to a type"

Answer 1

In order to use the FindBugs annotations, you need to include annotations.jar and jsr305.jar from the FindBugs distribution on your classpath. If you are sure that you want the @SuppressFBWarnings annotation only (and not the others), then annotations.jar alone would be sufficient.

You can find the two JARs in the lib folder of the FindBugs distribution.

If you are using Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.code.findbugs</groupId>
    <artifactId>annotations</artifactId>
    <version>3.0.1</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.code.findbugs</groupId>
    <artifactId>jsr305</artifactId>
    <version>3.0.1</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

If you are using Gradle:

dependencies {
    compileOnly 'com.google.code.findbugs:annotations:3.0.1'
    compileOnly 'com.google.code.findbugs:jsr305:3.0.1'
}

compileOnly is the Gradle flavor of what Maven calls provided scope.

---

Update for SpotBugs (2018):

FindBugs has been superseded by SpotBugs. So if you are already using SpotBugs, the migration guide suggests that you use the following dependencies instead:

Please depend on both of spotbugs-annotations and net.jcip:jcip-annotations:1.0 instead.

Maven:

<dependency>
    <groupId>net.jcip</groupId>
    <artifactId>jcip-annotations</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.spotbugs</groupId>
    <artifactId>spotbugs-annotations</artifactId>
    <version>3.1.3</version>
    <optional>true</optional>
</dependency>

Gradle:

dependencies {
    compileOnly 'net.jcip:jcip-annotations:1.0'
    compileOnly 'com.github.spotbugs:spotbugs-annotations:3.1.3'
}

If you also used jsr305, that dependency remains the same as above.