When you write a class implementing an interface or extending a super class, it is often the case that the API is identical. It would be nice to inherit the JavaDoc documentation, which is possible.

Inheriting JavaDoc

Java method that overwrite a superclass method or implement an interface method, can inherit JavaDoc by including this JavaDoc for that method:

/** {@inheritDoc} */
@TestMethod("testGetMIMEType")
public String getMIMEType() {
  return null;
}

The JavaDoc documentation notes that missing @param and @return values are inherited implicitly since JavaDoc 1.3, but I have never noticed this in Java6. The above explicit markup is confirmed to work.

This post was originally posted as https://chem-bla-ics.blogspot.com/2010/03/cleaner-cdk-code-4-inheriting-javadoc.html.