What is the reason for checking the amount of annotations on the classes

https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/blob/master/spring/src/main/java/cucumber/runtime/java/spring/SpringFactory.java

private void checkAnnotationsEqual(Class<?> stepClassWithSpringContext, Class<?> stepClass) {
        Annotation[] annotations1 = stepClassWithSpringContext.getAnnotations();
        Annotation[] annotations2 = stepClass.getAnnotations();
        if (annotations1.length != annotations2.length) {
            throw new CucumberException("Annotations differs on glue classes found: " +
                    stepClassWithSpringContext.getName() + ", " +
                    stepClass.getName());
        }
        for (Annotation annotation : annotations1) {
            if (!isAnnotationInArray(annotation, annotations2)) {
                throw new CucumberException("Annotations differs on glue classes found: " +
                        stepClassWithSpringContext.getName() + ", " +
                        stepClass.getName());
            }
        }
    }

What is the technical reason for this?

This check has broken again the compatibility…

[brasmusson]

To make the spring transactions (#637) and auto-wiring of one stepdef class to another (which you know of https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/issues/569#issuecomment-26699067), the SpringFactory will create bean definitions for all the glue classes in the context defined by one (the first one found) glue class with a @ContextConfiguration/@ContextHierachy annotation. As SpringFactory (after #711) works, this one class is the only class that Spring will be aware of and therefor its annotations are applied globally (so to say). This guard is there to prevent the any problems caused by silently not using the annotations the user thinks will be used, it is essentially saying “this won’t work as you think, so let’s not continue”.

Is it possible to allow different context definitions on different glue classes? Maybe, but it seems very complex. Is it possible to allow different annotations, but the same context definition, on different glue classes? Maybe not as complex as allowing different contexts, but still complex. At least it looks like this to me.

Links to some discussions about this: https://github.com/cucumber/cucumber-jvm/pull/711#discussion_r12776747 on the mailing list

[lock[bot]]

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