Using null annotations for fields (currently beta) in Eclipse JDT Juno

It is common knowledge by now that Eclipse Juno's JDT shipped with support for null annotations for inter-procedural null analysis. This was very well-received and the work made it to several blogs about the 10 most interesting Eclipse Juno features. While this is only applicable to local variables/method parameters for now, I had also blogged about null analysis support for fields while we worked on it. However, due to the sheer complexity of dealing with problems such as aliasing, concurrency, etc with fields and the current infrastructure's limitations in dealing with these issues comprehensively, we had to withdraw this feature. Because of this, Juno did not come with null annotations support for fields.

However, the good news is that along with the Juno release, the JDT team, with all due credits to Stephan Herrmann, also released a public beta version of null annotations support for fields. Please visit the null analysis beta wiki page to learn about installation and usage of this feature. As Stephan puts it in his post on DZone, "feedback to this experimental solution should help us to decide what will be JDT's final solution regarding null analysis for fields". So, please start using it if you've upgraded to Eclipse Juno. If not, what are you waiting for? ;)