Container for all annotations (attributes in javac) on a Symbol. This class is explicitly mutable. Its contents will change when attributes are annotated onto the Symbol. However this class depends on the facts that List (in javac) is immutable. An instance of this class can be in one of three states: NOT_STARTED indicates that the Symbol this instance belongs to has not been annotated (yet). Specifically if the declaration is not annotated this instance will never move past NOT_STARTED. You can never go back to NOT_STARTED. IN_PROGRESS annotations have been found on the declaration. Will be processed later. You can reset to IN_PROGRESS. While IN_PROGRESS you can set the list of attributes (and this moves out of the IN_PROGRESS state). "unnamed" this SymbolMetadata contains some attributes, possibly the final set. While in this state you can only prepend or append to the attributes not set it directly. You can also move back to the IN_PROGRESS state using reset().

This is NOT part of any supported API. If you write code that depends on this, you do so at your own risk. This code and its internal interfaces are subject to change or deletion without notice.