DebuggerStepThrough equivalent for Java

Question

.NET has a couple of handy annotations that instruct a debugger to step through/over certain methods. I would like to know if there is an equivalent that works on the Java platform.

For instance:

@DebuggerStepThrough
public void foo() {
  ..
}

would cause the debugger to not stop in foo when stepping.

What I tried

• using the SYNTHETIC flag in the classfile. This causes javac to forbid user-code calling such methods.
• custom attributes. There is no JDI API to retrieve annotations. Also mentioned on this forum.

PS. I am implementing a debugger and have control over the bytecode that is emitted

Mastiff

Answer 1

AFAIK, not as a stock feature, no.

Otherwise I can also recommend having a look at eclipse debugger's "Step filter" and "conditional breakpoint" features. It allows you to ignore certain types (step filter) or only halt on certain runtime conditions (conditional breakpoints).

Turmoil

Thanks, but that's not what I was looking for. I wanted a platform-level annotation, avoiding the need for me to implement step filters for my language (essentially duplicating the work that the Java IDE team did already for Java). In the meantime I know there is no such thing. – Mastiff