README.md

better-repeatable

Eliminates need of using container to group repeatable annotations together.
Once the compiler plugin sees any annotation that is marked with dev.xdark.betterrepeatable.Repetable, any use of java.lang.annotation.Repeatable for the place where the annotation is used (class, field, method) will be ignored and annotations will be dumped as-is, in preserved order.

Primary purpose of change made better-repeatable is to be able to read annotations with ASM or any other bytecode framework in order they appear in source code, which is not possible with built-in @Repeatable annotation.

Getting started

Apply Gradle plugin:

plugins {
  id 'dev.xdark.betterrepeatable' version 'latest_version_here'
}

Plugin will automatically include API dependency to compileOnly configuration.
If you want to disable such behaviour, set usePluginAsDependency to false:

betterRepeatable {
    usePluginAsDependency = false
}

Breaking behaviour

With better-repeatable changes, built-in Java API to read annotations in places, where there are multiple annotations, will no longer work.
This is caused by code in sun.reflect.AnnotationParser:

Class<? extends Annotation> klass = a.annotationType();
if (AnnotationType.getInstance(klass).retention() == RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME &&
    result.put(klass, a) != null) {
        throw new AnnotationFormatError(
            "Duplicate annotation for class: "+klass+": " + a);
    }