[seam-dev] Need for Common Annotation-attribute scanning/parsing utility (or CDI API/SPI)

As many of you know, when creating API annotations for Seam Modules, we have an interesting situation: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/WELDX-95 Due to the fact that annotations can include meta-annotations, we need to recursively scan the annotation hierarchy in order to obtain the correct annotation instance (or null if it isn't declared,) then return that annotation in order to access the attributes. This becomes even more complex when annotations are added via the seam-xml-config module, but I'll let Dan or Pete explain that one. It seems likely that we will need a new API/SPI in CDI in order to appropriately address performance concerns with doing such recursive, synchronized (locking!) lookups. There are several questions to address: 1. Where do we allow nested/meta-annotations? 2. How do we address the performance concerns where they are allowed? -- Lincoln Baxter, III http://ocpsoft.com http://scrumshark.com "Keep it Simple"