[bronty]

There's two different issues here: (1) whether or not to use compiler plug-ins, and (2) whether or not to use compiler plug-ins for metaprogramming.

Using plug-ins for automated analysis improves the quality of your codebase. The annotations serve as a machine-checked documentation which make the code easier to debug.

As you point out though, the benefits of plug-ins for metaprogramming (such as implementing a DSL) is not always as clear-cut: you have to pay the price of maintenance, much of which is not always obvious up-front.

You face many of the same issues when designing a DSL in Scala --- the DSL may generate code that depends on a custom run-time or library.