Crash when trying to use latest snapshot version of Checker dataflow

[msridhar]

To reproduce, do ./gradlew publishToMavenLocal in the Checker Framework repo, then check out https://github.com/msridhar/NullAway/tree/cf-3.40.1-snapshot, and finally run ./gradlew :sample:compileJava in the NullAway repo. I get a crash (this is with JDK 17), relevant stack:

 Caused by: org.checkerframework.nullaway.javacutil.UserError: Configuration problem! Could not load type: org.checkerframework.dataflow.qual.AssertMethod
        at org.checkerframework.nullaway.javacutil.TreeUtils.getMethods(TreeUtils.java:1332)
        at org.checkerframework.nullaway.javacutil.TreeUtils.getMethod(TreeUtils.java:1276)
        at org.checkerframework.nullaway.javacutil.TreeUtils.getMethod(TreeUtils.java:1257)
        at org.checkerframework.nullaway.dataflow.cfg.builder.CFGTranslationPhaseOne.<init>(CFGTranslationPhaseOne.java:462)
        at com.uber.nullaway.dataflow.cfg.NullAwayCFGBuilder$NullAwayCFGTranslationPhaseOne.<init>(NullAwayCFGBuilder.java:112)
        at com.uber.nullaway.dataflow.cfg.NullAwayCFGBuilder.build(NullAwayCFGBuilder.java:70)
        at com.uber.nullaway.dataflow.DataFlow$2.load(DataFlow.java:137)
        at com.uber.nullaway.dataflow.DataFlow$2.load(DataFlow.java:102)
        at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$LoadingValueReference.loadFuture(LocalCache.java:3571)
        at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$Segment.loadSync(LocalCache.java:2313)
        at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$Segment.lockedGetOrLoad(LocalCache.java:2190)
        at com.google.common.cache.LocalCache$Segment.get(LocalCache.java:2080)

This looks like the relevant code:

checker-framework/dataflow/src/main/java/org/checkerframework/dataflow/cfg/builder/CFGTranslationPhaseOne.java

Lines 462 to 465 in 49d97d7

	assertMethodValueElement = TreeUtils.getMethod(AssertMethod.class, "value", 0, env);
	assertMethodParameterElement = TreeUtils.getMethod(AssertMethod.class, "parameter", 0, env);
	assertMethodIsAssertFalseElement =
	TreeUtils.getMethod(AssertMethod.class, "isAssertFalse", 0, env);

Will this code only work if the checker-qual artifact is in the classpath of the program being compiled? If so, can we do things in a different way that removes that requirement? This requirement won't work for NullAway users.

[msridhar]

FYI @smillst