JSR 250 ("Common Annotations 1.0") specified a set of common annotations for application development. Some of them were included in Java SE 6 and later, but many of them are Java EE-specific and were added in Java EE 5. Tomcat 6 included these annotations since Tomcat supported some of them. The annotations included in Tomcat 6 are: javax.annotation.Generated javax.annotation.PostConstruct javax.annotation.PreDestroy javax.annotation.Resource javax.annotation.Resources javax.annotation.security.DeclareRoles javax.annotation.security.DenyAll javax.annotation.security.PermitAll javax.annotation.security.RolesAllowed javax.annotation.security.RunAs This was fine in Java EE 5 / Tomcat 6. However, Java EE 6 ("Common Annotations 1.1") added the following annotations that Tomcat 7 never included: javax.annotation.ManagedBean javax.annotation.sql.DataSourceDefinition javax.annotation.sql.DataSourceDefinitions Furthermore, Java EE 7 ("Common Annotations 1.2") added the following annotation that Tomcat 8 has not yet included: javax.annotation.Priority Tomcat should included these annotations in its "annotations-api.jar". Other frameworks (like Spring Framework and JPA providers) make use of these new annotations. Since Tomcat does not include them, the /correct/ thing for an application that needs them to do is include the official javax.annotation-api.jar artifact in their application. However, this JAR redefines annotations already supplied by Tomcat, which could lead to hard-to-diagnose errors (similar to why an application should never include the servlet-api artifact in their application). Adding these missing annotations would remove the requirement for applications to include the problem JAR in their application. Tomcat 7 should ship @ManagedBean, @DataSourceDefinition, and @DataSourceDefinitions. Tomcat 8 should ship with @Priority.
A review also spotted some errors in the existing common annotations 1.0 implementation. Note that some of the official Java EE 5 Javadoc for common annotations is not correct. Everything has been fixed for 8.0.x and 7.0.x and will be included in 8.0.0-RC2 and 7.0.43. The CA 1.0 fixes have been proposed for 6.0.x.
Excellent. Good news! Thanks for attacking this so quickly.