@MustOverride annotation?

Question

In .NET, one can specify a \"mustoverride\" attribute to a method in a particular superclass to ensure that subclasses override that particular method. I was wondering whether

Answer 1

I've been thinking about this.

While I don't know of any way to require it with a compile error, you might try writing a custom PMD rule to raise a red-flag if your forgot to override.

There are already loads of PMD rules that do things like reminding you to implement HhashCode if you choose to override equals. Perhaps something could be done like that.

I've never done this before, so I'm not the one to write a tutorial, but a good place to start would be this link http://techtraits.com/programming/2011/11/05/custom-pmd-rules-using-xpath/ In this example, he basically creates a little warning if you decide to use a wildcard in an import package. Use it as a starting point to explore how PMD can analyze your source code, visit each member of a hierarchy, and identify where you forgot to implement a specific method.

Annotations are also a possibility, but you'd have to figure out your own way to implement the navigation through the class path. I believe PMD already handles this. Additionally, PMD has some really good integration with IDEs. https://pmd.github.io/