Its an interesting idea that I'd like to explore - time permitting.
But, what would you use to take the place of XPath? I mean, what
language construct to you have to associate external annotations with
methods, fields, etc. in the Java class definition?
Kohsuke Kawaguchi wrote:
> Mark Hansen wrote:
>
>> JAXB 2.0 lets you put binding declarations either inline with schema
>> or in a separate binding declarations file. Is there a similar
>> capatiblity for annotations? That is, is there a way to put JAXB
>> annotations is a separate file so that you can marshal/unmarshal an
>> existing POJO without having to add annotations to it?
>
>
> That was indeed discussed in the EG, but in the end that felt like a
> much more general idea applicable to all annotations.
>
> In terms of the RI, it does retain an internal abstraction
> (AnnotationReader) that lets you read annotations from other sources.
> So it's possible for someone to define a file format and write a
> processor to use it.
>
> Would you be interested in doing that?
>