Historically, we have rarely intentionally thrown a
NullPointerException in the Spring Framework. Instead, we prefer to
throw either an IllegalArgumentException or IllegalStateException
instead of a NullPointerException.
However, changes to the code in recent times have introduced the use of
Objects.requireNonNull(Object) which throws a NullPointerException
without an explicit error message.
The latter ends up providing less context than a NullPointerException
thrown by the JVM (since Java 14) due to actually de-referencing a
null-pointer. See https://openjdk.org/jeps/358.
In light of that, this commit revises our current use of
Objects.requireNonNull(Object) by removing it or replacing it with
Assert.notNull().
However, we still use Objects.requireNonNull(T, String) in a few places
where we are required to throw a NullPointerException in order to
comply with a third-party contract such as Reactive Streams.
Closes gh-32430
986c4fd926