Error Prone VS record-builder

error-prone is good for some extra static analysis.

A special kind of validation is enforcing that record fields are not null. (Un)fortunately, records do not have any special behavior regarding nullability. You can use tools like NullAway or Error Prone to prevent null in your code in general, or you can add checks to your records:

I am all in favour to more third side libraries adding functionalities, like Lombok, Manifold and error prone. As well as smaller projects like this shameless plug and what appears in this list

If only Google didn't suck when it came to Java9+ support... https://github.com/google/error-prone/issues/2649

I haven't used it. I use Google's ErrorProne + Lombok to prevent NPEs in java.

Take a look at NullAway, a plugin for Error Prone.

For some of this stuff, there are compiler extensions that allow extra type checking to be added e.g. Google Error-Prone: https://github.com/google/error-prone with stuff like: https://errorprone.info/bugpattern/ReturnMissingNullable.

Doesn't help you with third party libraries, but across an org applying that rule (and others!) typically ensures some consistency.

How to build a static analysis plugin. Google has a framework for Java with a good tutorial.

The problem with this approach is that the people will have to build crutches like https://github.com/Randgalt/record-builder and by the time Java adds missing features all the codebases will be forever polluted with legacy workarounds that nobody will dare to remove because of backwards compatibility.

It also hinders adoption of new features as people will prefer to maintain consistency in their codebases.

Record builder is pretty good for making builders for your Java 17 records

I always have to bring up RecordBuilder simply because of the included Withers and it being a source generator instead of the Lombok weirdness.

The above is not particularly user-friendly. Luckily compiler plugins can provide the missing feature, most notably RecordBuilder:

For records, instead of lombok you can use https://github.com/Randgalt/record-builder which is a valid annotation processor and will not break on JDK changes

In this particular case you can generate the builder with something like https://github.com/Randgalt/record-builder that is both valid java and lombok-like enough

Records + Record Builder or immutables + the trick to hide the implementing class w/sealed are your friend. Both the mutability and naming conventions this generates are vomitus.

Did you use https://github.com/Randgalt/record-builder ?

Try my annotation processor. It generates withers. https://github.com/Randgalt/record-builder

I personally don't use that one much, but you could use this library instead.