/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
 * contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this
 * work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF
 * licenses this file to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
 * You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT
 * WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the
 * License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under
 * the License.
 */

package java.lang.annotation;

/**
 * Defines a meta-annotation for determining the scope of retention for an
 * annotation. If the retention annotation is not set {@code
 * RetentionPolicy.CLASS} is used as default retention.
 *
 * @see RetentionPolicy
 * @since 1.5
 */
@Documented
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE)
public @interface Retention {
    
    /**
     * Returns the retention policy for the annotation.
     * 
     * @return a retention policy as defined in {@code RetentionPolicy}
     */
    RetentionPolicy value();
}