Hi Peter, do you mean to implement annotation instances as value objects? This seems possible specifiation-wise, but since annotations from core reflection are implemented with java.lang.reflect.Proxy, there are serialization incompatibility risks. (This risk also blocks a few other annotation improvement proposals) Other risks may exist too.
So I think the situation is: 1. User can start implementing annotations with value objects 2. The JDK won't consider migrating builtin annotations for now 3. The door to future migration of builtin annos remain open, but we need to identify and resolve blockers, and is likely of lower priority given resource constraints Regards On Sat, Feb 21, 2026, 17:04 Peter Eastham <[email protected]> wrote: > Since this request feels a bit early in the preview lifecycle I'll try to > keep it brief. I decided to bring it up as it would likely involve a > Specification Update and I have no idea how long that takes to outline. > > Have annotations been considered for the value modifier? My thought > process here is that the identity of a given annotation isn't particularly > useful, and the immutable behavior of Annotations mean they fall into a > similar bucket as Records, where Identity *could* be useful, but not > necessary. > > I tried to scrub over some of the resources, but I couldn't find if this > topic had been covered. > > Thanks, > -Peter Eastham >
