Tamas Miklossy
by Tamas Miklossy Apr 25, 2018
3 min. reading time

In the Xtend programming language, visibility modifiers are unnecessary when they match the defaults.

The public modifier is default on:

  • Classes
  • Interfaces
  • Enums
  • Annotatitons
  • Constructors
  • Methods


The private modifier is default on:

  • Fields

Additionally the final modifier is redundant in combination with the val keyword on field declarations, and the def keyword in combination with the override keyword on method declarations.

Xtend 2.14 adds validation rules to detect the unnecessary modifiers and issues corresponding warnings.


1_Unnecessary_Modifier_Warnings


The Xtend IDE also provides Quick Fixes to assist the user on fixing such issues: Select all Unnecessary modifier warnings on the Problems view and invoke the Quick Fix dialog either via the context menu or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + 1.

2_Quickfix_Dialog


After clicking on the Finish button all Unnecessary modifier warnings will be fixed at once with a single action. Comparing the Xtend code before and after the Quick Fix execution confirms that all unnecessary modifiers have been successfully removed.

3_Compare_Dialog


For ongoing Xtend projects, it could be noisy suddenly having tons of new warnings after updating to a new Xtend version. The Unnecessary modifier serverity can be configured on the Xtend preference page and (wenn desired) can even be completely ignored.

4_Xtend_Preferences

The latest Xtend version can be installed from its Update Site. Give it a try! The Xtext team is always happy about your early feedback!

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