Mutability: equals depends on mutable field

Your equals method references a field that is not final. This means that if the value of this field changes, the same object may not be equal to itself at two different points in time. This can be a problem if you use this object as a key in a map, or if you put it in a HashSet or other hash-based collection: the collection might not be able to find your object again.

There are three ways to solve this:

• Make your field final. This is the preferred solution.
• If your class is immutable, you can add an @Immutable annotation to your class. (A class can theoretically be immutable if its fields aren’t final; however, with non-final fields you probably need a formal proof to make sure that it is indeed immutable.)
• Suppress Warning.NONFINAL_FIELDS if your class has to be mutable. For example:

EqualsVerifier.forClass(Foo.class)
    .suppress(Warning.NONFINAL_FIELDS)
    .verify();

Note: Unfortunately, EqualsVerifier cannot detect if your fields are truly immutable, which is what’s actually needed here. It can only see if fields are final, or if the class has an @Immutable annotation.

Read more about this subject in the manual’s page on immutability.