Add since information to properties

[keith-turner]

https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACCUMULO-4592

[foster33]

Is this still a desired addition? I was looking at potential issues to do and came by this one.

[ctubbsii]

@foster33 Yes, this would still be a nice addition. Adding both "since" and "deprecated since", and also "replaced by", if relevant, information to the generated docs at https://accumulo.apache.org/docs/2.x/configuration/server-properties would be great. The code that generates the Markdown for that page is in core/src/main/java/org/apache/accumulo/core/conf/ConfigurationDocGen.java

For "deprecated since" you could use the @Deprecated(since = "1.6.4") annotation information. You can pull the "replaced by" information from our own @ReplacedBy annotation. You'll probably have to create some kind of @Since annotation, but you may wish to avoid using that name, so it's not confused with the built-in javadoc @since tag. Perhaps @AvailableSince?

A quick Google search and I found a tutorial about accessing annotation parameters that could be useful at https://nadundesilva.medium.com/reading-annotations-at-run-time-using-the-java-reflections-api-ce175ba43b2

Adding these in an automated way using these annotations could help us remove the same, redundant information from the description fields that we had been manually adding.

[ctubbsii]

The original ticket did suggest using the enum constructor parameter to store this information, but annotations might be easier. It'd just be annoying to have a new annotation for every enum, since that's a lot of new lines to add to the file. It might be best to store "since" information in the enum, passed as a constructor parameter, and only use the annotations for @Deprecated and @ReplacedBy, since those are rarer. Even if this doesn't save space, it can be used to guarantee that everything gets "since" information, because parameters can be made mandatory, and it's easy to accidentally omit an annotation. Though, a unit test could be used to ensure everything's annotated with "since" information if you go that route.