[jbosscache-dev] poll: java tag for shortcut set up methods created only for UT purposes?

[Galder Zamarreno]

Hi,

Quite often when contributing in JBoss projects, I create extra  
protected methods (i.e. setters)
to make my life a lot simpler when coding unit tests. People have  
different opinions (such as
the messaging guys who believe every single UT should be coded to the  
public API), but I
personally believe that you shouldn't be necessarily forced to set up  
a complete environment
to run a specific UT. There're a lot of situations where it makes  
sense to do this, but others where
not, and in the latter, having "shortcut" set up methods helps.

Sometimes, this "shortcut" methods are already there but other times  
are not, hence my tendency
to create these protected methods.  Now, wouldn't it be nice if  
there's a Java tag
that could be applied to this methods to indicate that:

"this method is only here to make my unit-testing-coding-life easier  
and so, should only be called from
unit tests, not from production code"

I had a quick look around and could not find anything. Do people  
agree/disagree with creating such tag?

Cheers,

Galder