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Memoize the default qualifiers that apply to a scope - #8216

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@mernst mernst commented Sep 19, 2026

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Depends on #8215, and includes its commit. GitHub requires a pull request's base branch to live in the base repository, so this cannot be based on is-parsing-annotation-files directly. Merge #8215 first; this branch's second commit onward is the actual content here.

QualifierDefaults recomputed, for every type it defaulted, work whose answer never changes for a given scope.

  • defaultsAt memoized a result only when the result was non-empty. For an element whose enclosing scopes contribute no default, which is almost every element, each call re-walked element → class → outer classes → package → parent packages, doing two getDeclAnnotation lookups per level plus ElementUtils.parentPackage. An element annotated @DefaultQualifier with a qualifier that this checker does not support was worse: it produced an empty set only after AnnotationBuilder.fromName had parsed the annotation, and that parse was repeated on every call.
  • applyDefaultsElement re-concatenated three sequences of defaults per call, and called applyConservativeDefaults, which runs isFromStubFile, ElementUtils.isElementFromByteCode, and declarationFromElement even when neither conservative-defaults option is set and the answer is unconditionally false.
  • Each Default triggered a separate AnnotatedTypeScanner traversal of the type. AnnotatedTypeScanner.visit is final and calls reset(), so the scan overhead was paid once per Default.

Commits

  1. Make a default registered through addElementDefault compose with the other defaults. Field elementDefaults served two purposes: defaults declared through addElementDefault, and the memo for defaultsAt. They are now separate fields. This is a deliberate behavior change and the reason this commit is first: because the two purposes shared one field, defaultsAt consulted it before looking at the element's own @DefaultQualifier and before walking enclosing scopes, so a declared default suppressed both. The split also fixes an aliasing bug where addElementDefault mutated the enclosing scope's DefaultSet in place. No checker in this repository calls addElementDefault, so this commit adds a test that does.
  2. Memoize the absence of defaults, not just their presence, guarded so that -AatfDoNotCache disables the memo as that option intends.
  3. Memoize the list of defaults that applies to a scope. A scope with no declared default needs no storage of its own, so only a scope that has one gets a cache entry. Also deduplicates entries that a preceding entry makes redundant, and short-circuits applyConservativeDefaults.
  4. Apply a scope's defaults in one traversal of the type where that is possible.

The single pass is not unconditionally equivalent

Five locations annotate, from the top-level node, some node other than the top-level node: EXCEPTION_PARAMETER annotates the alternatives of a union type, and PARAMETER, RECEIVER, RETURN, and CONSTRUCTOR_RESULT annotate an executable type's parameter, receiver, and return types. The traversal visits those same nodes. So when a Default that annotates a node below the top level precedes one of those five, per-node and per-Default ordering disagree about which reaches the child node first.

Within one DefaultSet this cannot arise, because a DefaultSet is sorted by TypeUseLocation and the five cross-node locations precede the locations that annotate a descendant. It arises where two DefaultSets are concatenated and the second starts over at a low location. PrecedenceList detects that case and falls back to one traversal per Default. framework/tests/singlepassdefault/ covers it, and fails without the fallback.

Performance

A/B wall clock, alternating runs of checker.jar built from each branch over the same source tree. Workload: checker/jtreg/slowtypechecking/ plus all checker-qual and checker-util sources, -proc:only with the Nullness Checker, ~20 s per run, zero diagnostics so nothing aborted early.

median IQR
before 20.48 s 19.96–21.31
after 18.45 s 18.07–20.64

Paired per iteration: faster in 9 of 9 clean iterations, median −10.3%, sign test p = 0.004.

Caveats, in the interest of not overselling this: the machine became contended partway through, so the magnitude is soft; and slowtypechecking is by construction code where type traversals dominate, which is what commit 4 addresses, so −10% should be read as an upper bound rather than as what a typical project will see. I have not yet measured with commit 4 reverted, so the split between what the memoization buys and what the single traversal buys is not established.

Testing

./gradlew :framework:test :checker:test. The one failure was index-initializedfields emitting a slow.typechecking warning while the machine was at load 130.

Both new tests were checked to fail when the behavior they guard is reverted, so neither is vacuous.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

…ile is being parsed

AnnotatedTypeFactory.getDeclAnnotations returns early, without caching, while any
annotation file is being parsed, including the ajava file for the file currently being
type-checked.  Two callers that cache results derived from declaration annotations tested
only stubTypes and ajavaTypes, and not currentFileAjavaTypes, so a result computed while
that file was being parsed could be cached even though it was missing annotations.

currentFileAjavaTypes is protected, so a class outside AnnotatedTypeFactory could not
consult it.  Add AnnotatedTypeFactory.isParsingAnnotationFiles, which holds the complete
condition, and use it at the two guards in AnnotatedTypeFactory as well as in
QualifierDefaults and DefaultQualifierForUseTypeAnnotator.
…other defaults

Field elementDefaults served two purposes: it held the defaults that a type system had
declared for an element through addElementDefault, and it also memoized the merged results
of defaultsAt.  Split it into elementDeclaredDefaults and defaultsAtCache.

Because the two purposes shared one field, defaultsAt consulted the field before looking at
the element's own @DefaultQualifier annotation and before walking the enclosing scopes, so a
default declared through addElementDefault suppressed both.  That was an accident of the
representation rather than a design, and defaultsAt now merges a declared default with the
other defaults.  Which one wins a conflict is still decided by DefaultSet's ordering rather
than by scope depth, exactly as for the existing element-versus-package case.

The split also fixes an aliasing bug.  When an element contributed no default of its own,
defaultsAt returned the enclosing scope's DefaultSet itself, and addElementDefault then
added to that very set, so a default declared for one element appeared on its enclosing
scope as well.

No checker in this repository calls addElementDefault, so add a test that does.
defaultsAt memoized a result only when the result was non-empty.  For an element whose
enclosing scopes contribute no default, which is almost every element, each call therefore
re-walked element to class to outer classes to package to parent packages, performing two
getDeclAnnotation lookups per level plus ElementUtils.parentPackage.  An element annotated
@DefaultQualifier with a qualifier that this checker does not support was worse still: it
produced an empty set only after AnnotationBuilder.fromName had parsed the annotation, and
that parse was repeated on every call.

Memoize the empty result too.  Do not memoize while an annotation file is being parsed,
because getDeclAnnotation can return null for an element whose annotation file has not been
read yet, and apply the same condition to the non-empty case so that -AatfDoNotCache
disables the memo as that option intends.

DefaultSet.EMPTY is now shared much more widely, so make it immutable.
applyDefaultsElement concatenated three sequences on every call: the defaults of the scope,
the conservative defaults when they apply, and the checked code defaults.  Compute that
precedence list once per scope instead.

A scope with no declared default, which is the common case, needs no storage of its own: its
precedence list is one of two shared arrays, so only a scope that does have declared defaults
gets an entry in precedenceListCache.  Iterating an array also avoids three TreeSet iterator
allocations per call.

minimizeDefaults drops any Default whose location and qualifier hierarchy already appeared
earlier in the list.  Such a Default cannot have an effect: which nodes a scan annotates
depends on the location, the scope, and the structure of the type but never on the qualifier,
and addAnnotation fills a hierarchy only when that hierarchy is empty.

applyConservativeDefaults now returns false immediately when neither conservative defaults
option is set.  Every path through the rest of the method returns false in that case, and the
rest of the method calls isFromStubFile, ElementUtils.isElementFromByteCode, and
declarationFromElement.  Its existing early return on an empty uncheckedCodeDefaults never
fired, because createAndInitQualifierDefaults always calls addUncheckedStandardDefaults.
…ossible

Each Default triggered a separate AnnotatedTypeScanner traversal, and AnnotatedTypeScanner
clears visitedNodes at the start of every traversal, so the scan overhead was paid once per
Default.  Carry the whole precedence list into the scanner instead and apply every Default at
each node.

The two orders are not always equivalent.  Five locations annotate, from the top-level node,
some node other than the top-level node: EXCEPTION_PARAMETER annotates the alternatives of a
union type, and PARAMETER, RECEIVER, RETURN, and CONSTRUCTOR_RESULT annotate the parameter,
receiver, and return types of an executable type.  The traversal visits those same nodes.  So
when a Default that annotates a node below the top level precedes one of those five, the two
orders disagree about which Default reaches the child node first.

Within one DefaultSet this cannot arise, because a DefaultSet is sorted by TypeUseLocation and
the five cross-node locations precede the locations that annotate a descendant.  It arises
where two DefaultSets are concatenated and the second starts over at a low TypeUseLocation.
PrecedenceList detects that case, and applyDefaults then falls back to one traversal per
Default.  The added test fails without the fallback.
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📒 Files selected for processing (23)
  • docs/CHANGELOG.md
  • docs/manual/advanced-features.tex
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/type/AnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/type/typeannotator/DefaultQualifierForUseTypeAnnotator.java
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/util/defaults/DefaultSet.java
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/util/defaults/QualifierDefaults.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/test/junit/CustomApplierTest.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/test/junit/ElementDefaultTest.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/test/junit/SinglePassDefaultTest.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/customapplier/CustomApplierAnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/customapplier/CustomApplierBottom.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/customapplier/CustomApplierChecker.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultAnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultBottom.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultChecker.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultQual.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/singlepassdefault/SinglePassDefaultAnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/singlepassdefault/SinglePassDefaultChecker.java
  • framework/tests/customapplier/CustomApplier.java
  • framework/tests/elementdefault/ElementDefault.java
  • framework/tests/elementdefault/ElementDefaultNesting.java
  • framework/tests/elementdefault/ElementDefaultPrecedence.java
  • framework/tests/singlepassdefault/SinglePassFallback.java

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

The change centralizes annotation-file parsing checks and makes the shared empty default set immutable. QualifierDefaults now separates and caches element and qualifier defaults, computes precedence lists, invalidates caches after registrations, and supports single-pass traversal when safe. New tests cover element-default composition, nested precedence, origin-based precedence, and traversal behavior. The changelog documents these changes.

Suggested reviewers: smillst

Priority: ➖ Normal

Change: Bug fix

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 2 | ❌ 1

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Docstring Coverage ⚠️ Warning Docstring coverage is 65.52% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 58 functions across 16 files. (1 skipped:… Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.
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Docstring coverage is 65.52% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%. Docstring coverage is scoped to functions touched by this diff. Analyzed 58 functions across 16 files. (1 skipped: 1 unsupported.)

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mernst and others added 5 commits September 19, 2026 16:55
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* A default registered through addElementDefault takes precedence over a
  @DefaultQualifier annotation at the same location.
* A @DefaultQualifier on a nested element takes precedence over one on an
  enclosing element, as the manual specifies.
* minimizeDefaults tolerates a qualifier that is not in the type system,
  rather than crashing in getTopAnnotation.
* applyDefaults traverses the type once only if the applier's class does not
  override applyDefault.
* The defaultsAt and precedenceList memo caches are LRU.

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Actionable comments posted: 1


  • 🪄 Fix CodeRabbit comments on this PR
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Inline comments:
In
`@framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/util/defaults/DefaultSet.java`:
- Around line 28-40: Update the DefaultSet.EMPTY singleton so every TreeSet
view-producing method, including descendingSet and range-view methods such as
subSet, headSet, and tailSet, returns an unmodifiable view while preserving the
existing immutable behavior of add and addAll. Ensure callers cannot mutate the
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  • docs/CHANGELOG.md
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/type/AnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/type/typeannotator/DefaultQualifierForUseTypeAnnotator.java
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/util/defaults/DefaultSet.java
  • framework/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/framework/util/defaults/QualifierDefaults.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/test/junit/ElementDefaultTest.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/test/junit/SinglePassDefaultTest.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultAnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultBottom.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultChecker.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/elementdefault/ElementDefaultQual.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/singlepassdefault/SinglePassDefaultAnnotatedTypeFactory.java
  • framework/src/test/java/org/checkerframework/framework/testchecker/singlepassdefault/SinglePassDefaultChecker.java
  • framework/tests/elementdefault/ElementDefault.java
  • framework/tests/elementdefault/ElementDefaultNesting.java
  • framework/tests/elementdefault/ElementDefaultPrecedence.java
  • framework/tests/singlepassdefault/SinglePassFallback.java

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…pplied

Minimizing a precedence list, and applying every default in one traversal of
the type, both assume that applying a default means "add the qualifier if the
hierarchy is empty".  An applier that overrides addAnnotation or applyDefault
may do something else, so give it one traversal of the type per default and
give it even the defaults that minimization removed.  PrecedenceList retains
the unminimized list for that purpose; the two lists share one array when
minimization removed nothing.

Also, minimize nothing if the type factory overrides the two-argument
canonicalAnnotation, because then a Default's qualifier hierarchy is not
determined by the Default alone.

Document, in the manual and in the changelog, the precedence that
addElementDefault has and the ways in which the precedence of a
@DefaultQualifier annotation changed.
Track the enclosing type to compare in a single nullable variable, so that
the nullness checker can relate the null check to the use.
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