If you were planning to get rid of this file, that shouldn't stop you from accepting this patch.

I agree having this descriptor here is useless (because it doesn't contain types) but you still need some example descriptor (in a documentation folder) and a BIG note on the README about it. Without a descriptor, a type mapper won't work. UIMA can't figure out the new types being produced and can't figure out which types this component will take and produce as output. As such, the type mapper won't work remotely or in certain more complex use cases (CAS multipliers, etc).

I guess you can fix it with UIMAfit if you make a subclass for each specific usage of the typemapper or (hehe) if you do dynamic bytecode manipulation at run-time (mostly kidding). A descriptor is the easier path, by far.

I don't have any problems with UIMAfit and I use it myself, but without being rigorous on adding the type annotation to the annotators, I have found it can generate some of the harder to debug UIMA problems I have encountered.

Moreover, UIMAfit makes doing type-dynamic components (such as this type-mapper) almost impossible.