Reconsidering VFS URLS - JBoss5 and Spring

[mmichalek]

I know there are several posts and jiras related to this issue, but I wanted to ask the question in possibly a different way.
This post is related https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBSPRING-4, which basically describes a problem where Spring has trouble locating resources because the jar URL's have changed with JBoss 5's VFS. It’s also known on the Spring forums as http://jira.springframework.org/browse/SPR-5120.

The thing is, a lot of people are burning a lot of time over this issue. I realize the VFS has the potential to be very clean, and I'm sure there are a lot of great benefits to it. But for my situation, I'm not getting any benefits from it, and I'm dealing with several applications that I can't deploy to JBoss 5 because they use Spring.

Here’s what I’m wondering: Is there any way to configure JBoss 5 so we get the older style URLs from the classloader?

If not, I think JBoss should consider adding backward compatibility support here. While one could argue this is Spring’s problem, there's now a lot of broken code that either uses Spring or made similar assumptions about JAR urls. I’m personally working with 5 projects that are broken because of this issue (most are Spring related, but not all). What do you think?

Mark

[alesj]

"mmichalek" wrote:

Here's what I'm wondering: Is there any way to configure JBoss 5 so we get the older style URLs from the classloader?

Nope.

This would mean that we would either have to
* override all existing URL handlers
* work with crappy urls internally

"mmichalek" wrote:

If not, I think JBoss should consider adding backward compatibility support here.

We're doing something in this direction with current experimental VFS3.

"mmichalek" wrote:

While one could argue this is Spring's problem, there's now a lot of broken code that either uses Spring or made similar assumptions about JAR urls.

Yup, this is broken in 99,99% use cases.
Spring at least provides semi-decent hooks.

"mmichalek" wrote:

I'm personally working with 5 projects that are broken because of this issue (most are Spring related, but not all). What do you think?

Afaik this should be now mostly a config issue.
e.g. configuring proper VFS based resource handler from our spring-int project
- http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossas/projects/spring-int/trunk/

If you're missing something, feel free to post it here:
- http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewforum&f=223
and either Marius or me will have a look.

[mmichalek]

Ales, thanks for your quick reply. I appreciate that you are considering options for backward compatibility with this since it's been disruptive for so many users.

[alesj]

"mmichalek" wrote:
disruptive for so many users.

Disruptive in what way?
Just saying that it's disruptive doesn't actually make it so. ;-)

If you have valid cases I would very much like to hear/read them,
hence the spring-int project was started, to tackle such issues.

Afaik Marius fixed most of the VFS issues seen by our users.
Did you actually give that a spin?

[mmichalek]

I just mean disruptive in terms of people's time. Thanks for the info in this thread; I think I understand spring-int a little better now.

[marius.bogoevici]

Mark,

The most stable branch of the project is 1.0, here:
https://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossas/projects/spring-int/branches/1_0/

You can find the documentation under
https://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossas/projects/spring-int/branches/1_0/documentation/user-guide/

Or, of course, you can use the trunk, as indicated by Ales, but I'm planning on doing more changes there, so stuff is likely to change more often. In any event, fixes that are relevant to trunk and branch are ported to the 1.0 branch.

In terms of access and visibility, this is far from ideal, so we are working on setting up a project page where the latest releases can be downloaded, and the documentation can be accessed.

Also, for this and any further related questions, please use the "JBoss/Spring Integration" forum.

Hope that helps,
Marius