Android - how to add @hide annotation in my project

Question

I'm developing SDK, and I would like to use @hide annotation for methods/classes which I don't want to be visible for the user who uses my SDK. (same as in Activity implementation - line 3898)

I tried just to add @hide annotation but I saw that nothing happens. What should I need to do in order to use @hide annotation/or any other similar solution for encapsulating my internal SDK's classes/methods.

Answer 1

In Android SDK, the @hide annotation is only used when building the stub version of android.jar. At compile-time symbols are imported from this stub jar and only non-hidden symbols are available. At runtime in device or emulator the symbols are there in the platform libraries and they can be seen for example via reflection.

If your SDK only consists of a jar file or something similar, there really isn't a way to hide symbols in it.