Proposed methods:

public static <A extends Annotation> boolean isAnnotationPresent(Annotated annotated, final Class<A> annotationType, BeanManager beanManager)
{
if (annotated.isAnnotationPresent(annotationType))

for (Annotation candidate : annotated.getAnnotations())
{
if (beanManager.isStereotype(candidate.annotationType()))
{
for (Annotation stereotyped : beanManager.getStereotypeDefinition(candidate.annotationType()))
{
if (stereotyped.annotationType().equals(annotationType))

}
}
}
return false;
}

public static <A extends Annotation> boolean getAnnotation(Annotated annotated, final Class<A> annotationType, BeanManager beanManager)
{
Annotation found = annotated.getAnnotation(annotationType);
if (found != null)

for (Annotation candidate : annotated.getAnnotations())
{
if (beanManager.isStereotype(candidate.annotationType()))
{
for (Annotation stereotyped : beanManager.getStereotypeDefinition(candidate.annotationType()))
{
if (stereotyped.annotationType().equals(annotationType))

}
}
}
return null;
}

Though we should probably expand this to handle three flags:

1. Only look on Annotated
2. Look on Annotated or stereotypes
3. Look on Annotated or as meta-annotation

There are holes in the scenarios covered by the existing methods as well.

Also, the one annotation finder method on Reflections (getAnnotationsWithMetaAnnotations) should be moved to this class so that they are all in one place (just deprecate and delegate to AnnotationInspector).

In general we only support meta-annotations if the annotation is a stereotype. No reason to change this.

Okay, so that makes an even stronger point to align these because currently I'm seeing places where stereotypes are not honored. I embrace the idea of making stereotypes "the" meta-annotation resolver/designator

So, 1 and 2.

Added support for Annotated in addition to AnnotatedElement. Introduced simpler methods to make searching element + stereotypes (a transitive search). Added methods explicitly named to search annotation amongst stereotypes.

https://github.com/seam/solder/commit/c1539baf065fafc00d43cb08a76c327fd529b595