Annotation Sniffer: A tool to Extract Code Annotations Metrics

Since the introduction of code annotations in the Java language, this feature has been widely adopted by software developers across the globe. Main enterprise frameworks make extensive use of code annotations as a replacement for XML based solutions. Code annotations are inserted directly on code elements, providing a simple way to introduce custom metadata. To aid in our research that aims understanding how developers use this feature, we developed the Annotation Sniffer. An open source tool that extracts a suite of metrics dedicated to code annotations.