jbossall-client.jar and the jar hell at remote JBM client

[bodrin]

[JBM.1.4.0.SP3 \ jboss-4.2.2.GA]

Hi,

From a remote JBM client point of view we need some JBoss jars including jbossall-client.jar (http://labs.jboss.com/file-access/default/members/jbossmessaging/freezone/docs/userguide-1.4.0.SP3/html/installation.html#inst.remoteclient). I see two main problems with this:

1) The order of this jars does matter - this I think is not even mentioned into the docs, but if you list them into your classpath into a different order it will not work some times. The bigger problem is that in some places/containers there is no way to specify any such order like in tomcat for example.

2) If your project uses some library which is duplicated in jbossall-client.jar also and the versions are different - again we have a problem. One such example is hibernate.

I have found in this thread http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=153853&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10 that

jbossall-client.jar is an evil aggregation of jars. You will need to use the individual client jars from /jboss/client. I have changes the examples to make use of the correct jars, and we have documented the minimal set for JBM, but depending on the other EE features you use you may need to add more client jars...

So, the question is what is the minimal set of client jars needed for a remote JBM client?
And does this will solve problem 1) ?

[timfox]

There exact jars you need on the client side is explained in detail in section 4.4 of the user manual, and yes, it does also say in a yellow note box that they must appear in a different order:

http://labs.jboss.com/file-access/default/members/jbossmessaging/freezone/docs/userguide-1.4.5.GA/html/installation.html#inst.remoteclient

It's always worth looking in the documentation before asking a question like this.

[bodrin]

Ok, the thing about the order is there, sorry I haven't saw it, I just used the order from the examples.

But the question I wanted to ask was :) :

What is the minimal set of jars to be included from $JBOSS_HOME/client in order to replace the evil jbossall-client.jar in a remote JBM client?

[gaohoward]

To be honest, I don't know. :)

jbossall-client.jar is maintained by the AS team. It includes classes from various packages including some JBM and remoting ones. But there are still other classes from other packages in it which may or may not needed for a jbm client.

You'd better included it in you classpath and in the right order. If you want to get rid of it badly, you need to consult the AS team IMO.

[bodrin]

May be we can reverse engineer it somehow (jar classes intersection for example) .. but I hoped that someone knows the answer..

So, probably nobody knows if for a remote JBM client it would be sufficient to take all the jars from $JBOSS_HOME/client without jbossall-client.jar?

Having a requirement on the order of the jars is a bad thing, so it is duplicating classes in jars. Sooner or later this leads to various kinds of problems.

[timfox]

jar hell has been a known issue for a long time in JBoss Messaging.

But all new dev is on HornetQ - which doesn't have these issues.