post-compilation removal of annotations from byte code

Question

we are using a library that contains beans that are annotated with JAXB annotations. nothing in the way we use these classes depends on JAXB. in other words, we don\'t need JAXB

Answer 1

There is an additional AntTask Purge Annotation References Ant Task, which

Purge references to annotations out of the java bytecode/classfiles (remove the @Anno tag from annotated elements). Now you can use annotations to check constellations in bytecode after compilation but remove the used annos before releasing the jars.