Why don’t you support annotation subtyping (where one annotation type extends another)?
It complicates the annotation type
system, and makes it much more
difficult to write “Specific Tools”.
…
“Specific Tools” — Programs that query
known annotation types of arbitrary
external programs. Stub generators,
for example, fall into this category.
These programs will read annotated
classes without loading them into the
virtual machine, but will load
annotation interfaces.