How to Instrument JetBrains Annotations with Maven

Question

Does the JetBrains @NotNull annotations work in Maven or not?

Answer

We have a feature request about this: Official @NotNull instrumenter maven and gradle plugin Official @NotNull instrumenter maven and gradle plugin, please vote/star it.

The answer is yes. Below is an example workaround pom.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>jb_annotations_javac2_mvn</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <properties>
        <maven.compiler.source>11</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>11</maven.compiler.target>
        <intellij.version>203.7148.57</intellij.version>
    </properties>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>jetbrains.releases</id>
            <url>https://www.jetbrains.com/intellij-repository/releases</url>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>jetbrains.3rdparty</id>
            <url>https://cache-redirector.jetbrains.com/intellij-dependencies</url>
        </repository>
    </repositories>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.0.0</version>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>compile</phase>
                        <configuration>
                            <target>
                                <path id="j2sp">
                                    <pathelement location="${project.basedir}/src/main/java"/>
                                </path>
                                <taskdef name="javac2" classpathref="maven.runtime.classpath" classname="com.intellij.ant.Javac2"/>
                                <javac2 destdir="${project.basedir}/target/classes">
                                    <src refid="j2sp"/>
                                </javac2>
                            </target>
                        </configuration>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>run</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.jetbrains</groupId>
            <artifactId>annotations</artifactId>
            <version>22.0.0</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Optional, if you doesn't work with IDEA Swing forms -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.jetbrains.intellij.java</groupId>
            <artifactId>java-gui-forms-rt</artifactId>
            <version>${intellij.version}</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.jetbrains.intellij.java</groupId>
            <artifactId>java-compiler-ant-tasks</artifactId>
            <version>${intellij.version}</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</project>

Tested with IDEA 2025.1 and JDK 17, 24.

IDEA Settings: Check Delegate IDE build/run actions to Maven in the menu File | Settings |Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > Maven > Runner options.

You can check the full source code at https://github.com/JackyJetBrains/jb_annotations_javac2_mvn.