25, 2023 /Developers/ — This error has given me sleepless nights. The app worked fine but I updated the Gradle version it’s stopped working due to this one error
The error message “error: incompatible types: NonExistentClass cannot be converted to Annotation” means that the compiler is trying to convert a class called NonExistentClass to an annotation, but this is not possible because annotations are a special type of class.

I asked https://bard.google.com/ for help. Not so helpful in my opinion but worth taking note

There are a few possible reasons why you might be getting this error:

• You are trying to annotate something with a class that does not exist.
• You are trying to annotate something with a class that is not an annotation.
• You have a typo in the name of the annotation.
• There is a problem with your build configuration, such as a missing dependency.

To debug the error, you can try the following:

1. Check your imports to make sure that you are importing the correct annotation class.
2. Make sure that the annotation class exists and that it is an annotation.
3. Check the name of the annotation to make sure that you have not misspelled it.
4. Clean and rebuild your project.
5. If you are still getting the error, try changing the kapt annotation processor to the annotationProcessor annotation processor. This will give you a more detailed error message.

If you are still having trouble debugging the error, you can post your code on Stack Overflow or another programming forum and ask for help.

Here are some additional tips for debugging this error:

• If you are using a build tool such as Gradle or Maven, check the build logs for more information about the error.
• If you are using an IDE such as IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse, try using the IDE’s debugger to step through your code and see where the error is occurring.
• Try commenting out different parts of your code to see if you can narrow down the cause of the error.

Incompatible, in this context, means that the source type is both different from and unconvertible (by means of automatic type casting) to the declared type. This might seem like a syntax error, but it is a logical error discovered in the semantic phase of compilation.

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