A method, apparatus, and article are provided for managing migration of annotations between versions of source code. Annotations associated with patterns of source code are identified. A comparison of the modified source code is conducted in conjunction with the identified annotations in a prior version of the source code to determine if the annotations may be migrated to any portions of the modified source code. The comparison includes an exact match and a partial match. With respect to the partial match, a threshold value is employed to define the parameters of a partial match. All annotations that are determine to be an exact match or a partial match are automatically migrated to a location in the modified source code determine to match within the threshold value.