README.md

@API Guardian

Library that provides the @API annotation that is used to annotate public types, methods, constructors, and fields within a framework or application in order to publish their status and level of stability and to indicate how they are intended to be used by consumers of the API.

How to use it

The @API Guardian library is deployed to Maven Central. To avoid compile-time warnings, you need to declare it as a transitive compile-time dependency.

Apache Maven

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apiguardian</groupId>
    <artifactId>apiguardian-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.1.2</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {    
    compileOnlyApi("org.apiguardian:apiguardian-api:1.1.2")
}

Using compileOnlyApi will include the library on the compile classpath of downstream projects but not their runtime classpath. If you want downstream projects to be able to use the @API annotation at runtime, you should declare it as api instead:

dependencies {    
    api("org.apiguardian:apiguardian-api:1.1.2")
}

Java Platform Module System

module org.example {
    requires static transitive org.apiguardian.api;
}

Using static will only include the library on the module path of downstream projects at compile time but not at runtime. If you want downstream projects to be able to use the @API annotation at runtime, you should declare it without static instead:

module org.example {
    requires transitive org.apiguardian.api;
}