Description Jörg Hohwiller 2019-09-09 16:30:28 EDT

When I change or set the visibility of a class to default (package visible), Eclipse (with JavaDoc warnings enabled and scope set to protected) JavaDoc warnings produce warnings for all {@link} and @see reference on public methods in this type.
Valid Example:
public class Example1 {
  public void foo() {
  }

  /**
   * Like {@link #foo()} but with bar.
   * @see #foo()
   */
  public void bar() {
  }
}

Invalid Example:
class Example2 {
  public void foo() {
  }

  /**
   * Like {@link #foo()} but with bar.
   * @see #foo()
   */
  public void bar() {
  }
}

So in Example2 Eclipse produces warnings for the @link and the @see tag saying:
Javadoc: 'protected' visibility for malformed doc comments hides this 'default' reference	

IMHO this is a bug as there is nothing wrong here. There is no public API pointing to a refence of a scope not included in the JavaDoc. If you treat the visibility of these methods as default for deciding that they should not be referenced in public methods (what is fine so far) then you need to consider also the referencing methods as default visbility.
Be aware that also this is not redering a warning as it is perfectly fine:
public class Example3 {
  void foo() {
  }

  /**
   * Like {@link #foo()} but with bar.
   * @see #foo()
   */
  void bar() {
  }
}


By reducing the visibility from public to default I do not want to be forced to remove valuable information as my JavaDoc (of course the example has no value and is just nonsense). However these wrong warnings imply users to do so.