Suppressing Java Findbugs error (EI_EXPOSE_REP)

Question

I have a Java gettor method that looks like the following:

import java.util.Date;
//...
public Date getSomeDate() {
  return someDate;
}

an

Answer 1

No,we need to clone that object using below code :

public Date getSomeDate() {
  return new Date(someDate.getTime()).clone();
}

Answer 2

I just realized that Findbugs analyzes compiled code (.class files), not source code. After rebuilding and re-running Findbugs, the problem went away.