analyzer API: Element.metadata missing for static final fields

[yjbanov]

Example:

abstract class Foo {
  @Injector()
  static final field = null;

  @Injector()
  static get getter => null;
}

This happened when processing the code using resolved LibraryElement.

Expected Element.metadata corresponding to the FieldElement.getter of field and getter to return 1 ElementAnnotation.

Actually getting 1 ElementAnnotation for getter and 0 for field.

/cc @matanlurey @stereotype441

[stereotype441]

I believe this is working as intended. The language spec says that for each final field, a synthetic getter is created, so in a sense the code as equivalent to the following pseudocode:

abstract class Foo {
  @Injector()
  static final field = null;

  static get field => ...; // synthetic getter which gets the value of the field

  @Injector()
  static get getter => null;
}

So FieldElement.getter of field refers to the synthetic getter, which indeed has no annotations.

Putting on my psychic debugging hat, I'm guessing this arose because you are analyzing some code which refers to the field, and since the reference actually resolves to the synthetic getter, you aren't seeing the annotation you expect. If that's the case, the solution is to check whether the getter you're looking at is synthetic, and if so, look at the corresponding PropertyInducingElement. (Note: most people probably want to do this, so maybe we should make a convenience method that does this automatically. What do you think, @bwilkerson ?)

[bwilkerson]

I'd be fine with adding a convenience getter.