In general, my approach was to try to eliminate each unused parameter
using Eclipse's "Change Method Signature" refactoring. That did not
always succeed: a parameter may be unused in some base class method,
but then be used in subclass's override of that method. In cases
where refactoring to eliminate a parameter failed, I instead annotated
the parameter with '@SuppressWarnings("unused")' to silence the
warning.
Note: this group of changes creates a significant risk of
incompatibility for third-party WALA code. Some removed parameters
change externally-visible APIs. Furthermore, these changes do not
necessarily lead to Java compilation errors. For example, suppose
third-party code subclasses a WALA class or interface, overrides a
method, but does not annotate that method as @Override. Removing a
parameter means that the third-party method no longer overrides. This
can quietly change code behavior without compile-time errors or
warnings. This is exactly why one should use @Override wherever
possible, but we cannot guarantee that third-party WALA users have
done that.
In each of these cases, the constructor directly or indirectly has
side effects that we want to keep, even if the object itself is not
retained and used by eht code that invokes `new`.
Ben Liblit
Manu Sridharan
dolby-oss