Upgrade IAST Error Prone and NullAway

[bric3]

What Does This Do

Upgrade IAST's Error Prone to 2.50.0 and NullAway to 0.14.2. Compile IAST with JDK 25 and --release 8, and update the iterator's nullable varargs annotations for the newer NullAway checks.

Motivation

The older checker versions were not not upgraded because they enforced a Java 11 compiler (errorprone is a compiler "plugin"). Now that compilation happens on a later JDK (currently the one from the Gradle daemon (Java 25)), this requirement is no longer valid. The upgrade removes that compiler configuration, i.e. it is the java tracer default (targeting Java 8 bytecodes).

Note

With NullAway 0.14, a nullable varargs array needs a type-use annotation on the array dimension. For example, in Iterators:

final @Nullable E @Nullable ... items

The first annotation permits null elements; the second permits a null varargs array. Unfortunately the javax.annotation.Nullable cannot be placed on the array dimension. JSpecify's @Nullable supports this placement, but it's not a declared dependency today. JetBrains annotations however are already a compileOnly dependency, and JetBrains annotations support these type-use positions. See NullAway's annotation placement guide.

The above note suggests it might be useful to switch to standard JSpecify annotations at sone point, however this require to declare them as a dependency.

Additional Notes

--should-stop=ifError=FLOW tells javac to continue through flow analysis before stopping after an error. Error Prone 2.50.0 requires that setting otherwise the compilation fails with The default --should-stop=ifError policy (INIT) is not supported by Error Prone.
See Error Prone's installation guide.

Contributor Checklist

• Format the title according to the contribution guidelines
• Assign the type: and (comp: or inst:) labels in addition to any other useful labels
• Avoid using close, fix, or any linking keywords when referencing an issue
  Use solves instead, and assign the PR milestone to the issue
• Update the CODEOWNERS file on source file addition, migration, or deletion
• Update public documentation with any new configuration flags or behaviors
• Once approved, use merge queue to merge the PR

[dd-octo-sts]

🟡 Java Benchmark SLOs — Performance SLO warning (near threshold)

Suite	Status
Startup	🟡 warning

SLO thresholds are defined here based on automatically generated metrics. A warning is raised when results are within 5% of the threshold.

PR vs. master results

Scenario	Candidate	master	Δ (95% CI of mean)
startup:insecure-bank:iast:Agent	14.00 s	13.98 s	[-0.5%; +0.7%] (no difference)
startup:insecure-bank:tracing:Agent	12.94 s	13.06 s	[-1.6%; -0.3%] (maybe better)
startup:petclinic:appsec:Agent	17.52 s	16.76 s	[+0.3%; +8.8%] (maybe worse)
startup:petclinic:iast:Agent	17.44 s	17.54 s	[-1.3%; +0.1%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:profiling:Agent	17.34 s	17.36 s	[-1.4%; +1.2%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:sca:Agent	17.58 s	17.30 s	[+0.6%; +2.6%] (maybe worse)
startup:petclinic:tracing:Agent	16.25 s	16.64 s	[-6.6%; +1.9%] (no difference)

Commit: e68a3a56 · CI Pipeline · Benchmarking Platform UI

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Load and DaCapo benchmarks can be triggered manually in the GitLab pipeline. Results will appear in the Benchmarking Platform UI after completion.

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

Codex Review Summary

This comment shows the latest Codex review activity on this pull request.

Review	Status	Commit	Review trigger
📝 Code Review	✅ Completed 2026-09-25T15:23:59.842230Z	e68a3a5	Draft marked ready
🔒 Security Review	✅ Completed 2026-09-25T15:24:37.660815Z	e68a3a5	Draft marked ready

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[datadog-prod-us1-6]

More details

The IAST checker upgrade preserves Java 8 targeting while satisfying Error Prone 2.50.0 and NullAway 0.14.2’s compiler and annotation requirements.

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