Eclipse warning: "<methodName> has non-API return type <parameterizedType>"
- by Tenner
My co-worker and I have come across this warning message a couple times recently. For the below code:
package com.mycompany.product.data;
import com.mycompany.product.dao.GenericDAO;
public abstract class EntityBean {
public abstract GenericDAO<Object, Long> getDAO();
// ^^^^^^ <-- WARNING OCCURS HERE
}
the warning appears in the listed spot as
EntityBean.getDAO() has non-API return type GenericDAO<T, ID>
A Google search for "has non-API return type" only shows instances where this message appears in problem lists. I.e., there's no public explanation for it.
What does this mean? We can create a usage problem filter in Eclipse to make the message go away, but we don't want to do this if our usage is a legitimate problem.
Thanks!
