Prior to this commit, if null values were supplied for the
RepeatableContainers or AnnotationFilter arguments to `from()` factory
methods in MergedAnnotations, certain operations would eventually
result in a NullPointerException. This is to be expected; however, the
NullPointerException is often swallowed and only logged at INFO level
with an exception message similar to the following.
> Failed to introspect annotations on org.example.MyClass: NullPointerException
In such cases, the INFO log message is not helpful in diagnosing the
problem. Furthermore, since the exception is swallowed, the desired
operation (e.g., MergedAnnotations.stream(...)) simply returns no
results.
This commit improves the user experience by eagerly asserting non-null
preconditions for required arguments in MergedAnnotations.from()
factory methods.
Closes gh-25568
e25e690ad4