Three new article modules: configuration binding, profiles and config data, Spring AOP

configuration-properties/  @ConfigurationProperties vs @Value on Spring Boot 4.1.1.
  The relaxed-binding matrix is generated by binding each spelling rather than
  transcribed, and re-checked against real processes -- the in-process probe was
  wrong twice before it was right. Records the three findings that came out of it:
  @Value does get relaxed resolution inside Spring Boot (Boot attaches
  ConfigurationPropertySources), the configuration processor silently stops
  generating metadata on JDK 23+ when declared as a plain dependency, and @Valid is
  not what makes nested constraints run.

profiles-and-config/       Precedence, profiles, spring.config.import and config trees.
  /precedence reports every source holding a property in rank order with file and
  line, which turns "my profile file had no effect" into a two-line answer. Also
  pins the counterintuitive one: an imported file outranks the file that imported it.

spring-aop/                Designators, proxy types, and aspects that do not fire.
  One advice per supported designator so the reference table is generated from real
  matches; all fourteen unsupported designators fed to the parser. Two corrections to
  the reference documentation: unsupported designators throw
  UnsupportedPointcutPrimitiveException (extends RuntimeException, not
  IllegalArgumentException), and spring-boot-starter-aop was renamed to
  spring-boot-starter-aspectj in Boot 4.

19 contract tests across the three modules, 15 captured transcripts, all regenerated
by scripts/run-all.sh. Verified on Spring Boot 4.1.1, Spring Framework 7.0.9,
JDK 25.0.4.1.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Gip4srpzMwjgoba6uEfbr5

configuration-properties/docs/07-ide-metadata.md

@@ -0,0 +1,85 @@
+[← When @Value wins](06-when-value-still-wins.md) · [Index](../README.md) · [Diagnosing a value →](08-diagnosing-a-value.md)
+
+# 7. IDE metadata, and the JDK 23 change that silently breaks it
+
+Transcript: [`05-metadata-generation.txt`](output/05-metadata-generation.txt).
+
+## What the metadata is
+
+`spring-boot-configuration-processor` is an annotation processor. At compile time it reads your
+`@ConfigurationProperties` types and writes `META-INF/spring-configuration-metadata.json`:
+
+```json
+{
+  "groups": [
+    { "name": "demo.mail", "type": "com.ankurm.configprops.props.MailProperties" }
+  ],
+  "properties": [
+    { "name": "demo.mail.port", "type": "java.lang.Integer", "defaultValue": 587 }
+  ]
+}
+```
+
+That file is what makes property names auto-complete in an IDE, and what shows the Javadoc on
+a record component as hover documentation. Nothing at runtime reads it.
+
+## The failure
+
+Declaring the processor as a dependency — the way every tutorial written before 2024 shows —
+stops working on JDK 23 and later:
+
+```xml
+<dependency>
+  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
+  <artifactId>spring-boot-configuration-processor</artifactId>
+  <optional>true</optional>
+</dependency>
+```
+
+`javac` used to discover annotation processors on the classpath. That discovery was deprecated
+with a warning in JDK 21 and switched off in JDK 23. A processor that is only on the classpath
+is now simply not run.
+
+The build still succeeds. The jar is still valid. The application behaves identically. The only
+symptom is that property auto-completion quietly stops working, which is the kind of thing
+people blame on the IDE.
+
+Two compilations of identical sources with the identical processor jar:
+
+```
+A) javac -cp <deps>:spring-boot-configuration-processor.jar -d a $SOURCES
+   spring-configuration-metadata.json files produced: 0
+
+B) javac -proc:full -cp <deps>:spring-boot-configuration-processor.jar -d b $SOURCES
+   spring-configuration-metadata.json files produced: 1
+```
+
+## The fix
+
+Declare it as an annotation processor path, which puts it on `--processor-path` where discovery
+was never disabled:
+
+```xml
+<plugin>
+  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
+  <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
+  <configuration>
+    <annotationProcessorPaths>
+      <path>
+        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
+        <artifactId>spring-boot-configuration-processor</artifactId>
+        <version>${project.parent.version}</version>
+      </path>
+    </annotationProcessorPaths>
+  </configuration>
+</plugin>
+```
+
+`-proc:full` also works and is a smaller change, but it re-enables classpath scanning for every
+processor, which is the behaviour that was turned off for a reason.
+
+## Checking
+
+`ls target/classes/META-INF/spring-configuration-metadata.json`. If it is not there, the
+processor did not run. Add `@ConfigurationProperties` metadata to your build's definition of
+done, because nothing else will tell you.