DebuggerStepThrough equivalent for Java

Question

.NET has a couple of handy annotations that instruct a debugger to step through/over certain methods. I would like to know if there is an equivalent that works on the Java platform.

For instance:

@DebuggerStepThrough
public void foo() {
  ..
}

would cause the debugger to not stop in foo when stepping.

What I tried

• using the SYNTHETIC flag in the classfile. This causes javac to forbid user-code calling such methods.
• custom attributes. There is no JDI API to retrieve annotations. Also mentioned on this forum.

PS. I am implementing a debugger and have control over the bytecode that is emitted

Answer 1

AFAIK, not as a stock feature, no.

Otherwise I can also recommend having a look at eclipse debugger's "Step filter" and "conditional breakpoint" features. It allows you to ignore certain types (step filter) or only halt on certain runtime conditions (conditional breakpoints).