MetaAnnotationUtils should support arbitrary levels of meta-annotations [SPR-11470]

[spring-projects-issues]

Sam Brannen opened SPR-11470 and commented

Overview

The findAnnotationDescriptor() and findAnnotationDescriptorForTypes() methods in MetaAnnotationUtils currently only support a single level of meta-annotations.

In other words, meta-annotations on meta-annotations will never be found, and this does not align with Spring's standard support for meta-annotations with arbitrary levels.

Deliverables

1. Alter the search algorithms used in MetaAnnotationUtils so that arbitrary levels of meta-annotations (e.g., meta-annotations on meta-annotations) are supported for test-related annotations.

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Affects: 4.0 GA

Issue Links:

• AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation() should support arbitrary levels of meta-annotations [SPR-11448] #16074 AnnotationUtils.findAnnotation() should support arbitrary levels of meta-annotations
• TypeDescriptor should support arbitrary levels of meta-annotations [SPR-12793] #17390 TypeDescriptor should support arbitrary levels of meta-annotations

Referenced from: commits f895096

[spring-projects-issues]

Sam Brannen commented

This issue is closely related to #16074 but specific to spring-test.

[spring-projects-issues]

Sam Brannen commented

Completed as described in the comments for GitHub commit f895096:

Support arbitrary meta-annotation levels in the TCF

Prior to this commit, the findAnnotationDescriptor() and
findAnnotationDescriptorForTypes() methods in MetaAnnotationUtils only
supported a single level of meta-annotations. In particular, this kept
the following annotations from being used as meta-annotations on
meta-annotations:

• @ContextConfiguration
• @ContextHierarchy
• @ActiveProfiles
• @TestExecutionListeners

This commit alters the search algorithms used in MetaAnnotationUtils so
that arbitrary levels of meta-annotations are now supported for the
aforementioned test-related annotations.