How use two verions of itext jar files in pom.xml? - java

In my project i have dependencies displaytag and birt-runtime. And here display tag needs itext-2.0.1.jar and birt-runtime needs itext-2.1.7.jar so how can i declare this in my pom.xml to use itext-2.0.1.jar only by displaytag and use itext-2.1.7.jar only by birt-runtime. could some one let me know how to achieve this?
Thanks in advance.

In normal java application this is not possible, because in the application itext 2.1 and 2.0 will share the same classloader.
But normally, java-apis take care about backward-compatibility, so it should be possible to include only 2.1.
If not, you need multiple classloaders and then it will become complicated.
Existing solutions:
You could try to add an OSGi container to your application and run
both dependencies as a separate osgi-bundle.
If you run a jboss
application server, you could create one module with displaytag and
another one with birt-runtime.
DIY:
I've never done this but you could try to create to manage your own classloaders in your application and load the dependent jars into each own classloader. This article seems to cover the topic.

Short answer: you can't.
Long answer: Maven is a build tool and has no effect on runtime class loading in your application. Normally what it generates is one (or more) artifact(s), tipically jar or war files that may or may not contain your project's dependencies (depending on your POM files).
What you want to achieve is done at runtime by class loaders but under normal circumstances you don't want to tamper with class loading.
What you could do is:
Exclude unnecessary transitive dependencies of a dependency in your pom by defining exclusions, this way only one version of itext would be used. Of course, this only works if your dependencies don't rely on the internals of itext and their public API's are compatible but this might be the cleanest and easiest solution.
Use a framework/container that has stronger control over class loading, such as an OSGi container. These container provide bundles (somewhat equivalent to artifacts) with "private" class loaders enabling your application having multiple versions of the same library loaded that don't interfere with each other. This solution, however, has other disadvantages and I would only recommend this if you're already familiar with OSGi.

Related

How do big companies tackle with the package dependencies conflict problem?

Just as shown in the picture, one app (Java) referenced two third-party package jars (packageA and packageB), and they referenced packageC-0.1 and packageC-0.2 respectively. It would work well if packageC-0.2 was compatible with packageC-0.1. However sometimes packageA used something that could not be supported in packageC-0.2 and Maven can only use the latest version of a jar. This issue is also known as "Jar Hell".
It would be difficult in practice to rewrite package A or force its developers to update packageC to 0.2.
How do you tackle with these problems? This often happens in large-scale companies.
I have to declare that this problem is mostly occurred in BIG companies due to the fact that big company has a lot of departments and it would be very expensive to let the whole company update one dependency each time certain developers use new features of new version of some dependency jars. And this is not big deal in small companies.
Any response will be highly appreciated.
Let me throw away a brick in order to get a gem first.
Alibaba is one of the largest E-Commerces in the world. And we tackle with these problems by creating an isolation container named Pandora. Its principle is simple: packaging those middle-wares together and load them with different ClassLoaders so that they can work well together even they referenced same packages with different versions. But this need a runtime environment provided by Pandora which is running as a tomcat process. I have to admit that this is a heavy plan. Pandora is developed based on a fact that JVM identifies one class by class-loader plus classname.
If you know someone maybe know the answers, share the link with him/her.
We are a large company and we have this problem a lot. We have large dependency trees that over several developer groups. What we do:
We manage versions by BOMs (lists of Maven dependencyManagement) of "recommended versions" that are published by the maintainers of the jars. This way, we make sure that recent versions of the artifacts are used.
We try to reduce the large dependency trees by separating the functionality that is used inside a developer group from the one that they offer to other groups.
But I admit that we are still trying to find better strategies. Let me also mention that using "microservices" is a strategy against this problem, but in many cases it is not a valid strategy for us (mainly because we could not have global transactions on databases any more).
This is a common problem in the java world.
Your best options are to regularly maintain and update dependencies of both packageA and packageB.
If you have control over those applications - make time to do it. If you don't have control, demand that the vendor or author make regular updates.
If both packageA and packageB are used internally, you can use the following practise: have all internal projects in your company refer to a parent in the maven pom.xml that defines "up to date" versions of commonly used third party libraries.
For example:
<framework.jersey>2.27</framework.jersey>
<framework.spring>4.3.18.RELEASE</framework.spring>
<framework.spring.security>4.2.7.RELEASE</framework.spring.security>
Therefore, if your project "A" uses spring, if they use the latest version of your company's "parent" pom, they should both use 4.3.18.RELEASE.
When a new version of spring is released and desirable, you update your company's parent pom, and force all other projects to use that latest version.
This will solve many of these dependency mismatch issues.
Don't worry, it's common in the java world, you're not alone. Just google "jar hell" and you can understand the issue in the broader context.
By the way mvn dependency:tree is your friend for isolating these dependency problems.
I agree with the answer of #JF Meier ,In Maven multi-module project, the dependency management node is usually defined in the parent POM file when doing unified version management. The content of dependencies node declared by the node class is about the resource version of unified definition. The resources in the directly defined dependencies node need not be introduced into the version phase. The contents of the customs are as follows:
in the parent pom
<dependencyManagement> 
    <dependencies > 
      <dependency > 
        <groupId>com.devzuz.mvnbook.proficio</groupId> 
        <artifactId>proficio-model</artifactId> 
        <version>${project.version}</version> 
      </dependency > 
</dependencies >
</dependencyManagement>
in your module ,you do not need to set the version
<dependencies > 
    <dependency > 
      <groupId>com.devzuz.mvnbook.proficio</groupId> 
       <artifactId>proficio-model</artifactId> 
    </dependency > 
  </dependencies > 
This will avoid the problem of inconsistency .
This question can't be answered in general.
In the past we usually just didn't use dependencies of different versions. If the version was changed, team-/company-wide refactoring was necessary. I doubt it is possible with most build tools.
But to answer your question..
Simple answer: Don't use two versions of one dependency within one compilation unit (usually a module)
But if you really have to do this, you could write a wrapper module that references to the legacy version of the library.
But my personal opinion is that within one module there should not be the need for these constructs because "one module" should be relatively small to be manageable. Otherwise it might be a strong indicator that the project could use some modularization refactoring. However, I know very well that some projects of "large-scale companies" can be a huge mess where no 'good' option is available. I guess you are talking about a situation where packageA is owned by a different team than packageB... and this is generally a very bad design decision due to the lack of separation and inherent dependency problems.
First of all, try to avoid the problem. As mentioned in #Henry's comment, don't use 3rd party libraries for trivial tasks.
However, we all use libraries. And sometimes we end up with the problem you describe, where we need two different versions of the same library. If library 'C' has removed and added some APIs between the two versions, and the removed APIs are needed by 'A', while 'B' needs the new ones, you have an issue.
In my company, we run our Java code inside an OSGi container. Using OSGi, you can modularize your code in "bundles", which are jar files with some special directives in their manifest file. Each bundle jar has its own classloader, so two bundles can use different versions of the same library. In your example, you could split your application code that uses 'packageA' into one bundle, and the code that uses 'packageB' in another. The two bundles can call each others APIs, and it will all work fine as long as your bundles do not use 'packageC' classes in the signature of the methods used by the other bundle (known as API leakage).
To get started with OSGi, you can e.g. take a look at OSGi enRoute.
Let me throw away a brick in order to get a gem first.
Alibaba is one of the largest E-Commerces in the world. And we tackle with these problems by creating an isolation container named Pandora. Its principle is simple: packaging those middle-wares together and load them with different ClassLoaders so that they can work well together even they referenced same packages with different versions. But this need a runtime environment provided by Pandora which is running as a tomcat process. I have to admit that this is a heavy plan.
Pandora is developed based on a fact that JVM identifies one class by class-loader plus classname.

Dynamically adding beans and jars to Java application

For an ongoing project, we are looking for a possibility to dynamically download and load jar files into a running application. Apart from downloading the files (which is probably fairly straightforward), I am unaware of any solution that would automatically add the jar's to the classpath, and do discovery of the annotations (like CDI beans).
Given such a system, it would be rather handy if the #Inject annotation would not throw a runtime failure of an implementation of a class is not present (because that module-jar was not loaded).
Is there currently any such system? Does spring or OSGi fit this need?
Any ideas how close project Jigsaw would come in trying to fulfill this on application level?
I think you need OSGI, using an OSGI container like Karaf : https://karaf.apache.org
In standard java provide ServiceLoader https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ext/basics/spi.html
I advice you to not follow that path
It should be possible to dynamically load jar files without the usage of OGSI. The keyword are Classloaders especially when used with a proper hierarchy. The following answer should give you an idea: How should I load Jars dynamically at runtime? but keep in mind that this might cause serious security issues
You followed the path at 2. even I advice you not to do it. But now you end up in the scenario that the context of your used framework does not know this classes. You would have this problem with most IOC frameworks. Since they build up the context on startup. There are libraries for this created for development purpose (spring-loaded, spring dev tools, JRebel). If your IOC framework supports it go with it.
Regarding handling not available jars. The best point to do research on this is Spring Boot and its auto configuration mechanism. It checks if certain classes/jars (not sure to be honest) are available and add additional behavior for this cases. But still this is application startup solution and not a runtime IOC solution.

Use grails plugin outside of grails framework?

Is it possible to use a grails plugin outside of the grails framework?
Plugins that depend on Grails itself obviously don't qualify, but assuming a plugin depended only on non-grails libraries, is there a way to use a packaged plugin, as-is, in stand-alone groovy or Java app?
Intent
We have a LOT of functionality in Grails plugins, and we're thinking of using springboot for standalone groovy applications, so reusing the functionality in those plugins is important. I know Grails 3 is moving to springboot, but we're not holding our breath.
A packaged Grails plugin appears to contain only groovy source files, so I suspect this will work for groovy-based projects, though more difficult for pure Java projects.
I would guess the answer to this is "probably not" for the reason that your requirements specify something that shouldn't exist, but might. Why would a plugin be a plugin if it didn't require some measure of Grails libraries, processes, etc. If a plugin is just code, then it should really just be a jar.
That said, maybe there are plugins with just some Groovy classes in them. In that case, as long as you also manage to add their dependencies to your project, it shouldn't be that difficult to take the code for the plugin and convert it to compile into a jar instead, then depend on that jar (and its dependencies) in your project.
Be careful, as many plugins also depend heavily on Grails' Spring dependency injection. As you plan on using Spring Boot, that shouldn't be too difficult to recreate in your project, as the doWithSpring block in the plugin's descriptor should give you a good idea of what beans are needed. You should also look out for Grails-convention autowiring. If the plugin has a controller or service with a member named fileService, then you'll need to make sure that controller has a fileService injected when it's instantiated, just like Grails would do.
Finally, the directories in the plugin in which you find the classes in question are also important. Grails treats and loads classes from different directories in different ways (think Filters, Events, Jobs, etc.), which you would no longer get automatically. A plugin with some of these in it would take special handling when brought into a non-Grails project.
So, without knowing which plugins you're trying to use the classes out of, it's hard to say whether what you want is possible. I still think that most of the plugins people use actually require some Grails-like environment in which to run. That could be Grails, or something you set up that works similarly in Boot (good luck!)

How to make a java application's external jars usable to it's plug ins

I want to make a java application that supports plug ins. Now my core will use jars for certain processes. If my plug ins where to also use these jars, do the plug ins of my application need to configure their build path to include the jars they would also use or is their a way so that the jars can be imported similar to how I import packages from the main application
Guice and Spring are tools for dependency injection, which means that creating objects is easier with them because they take care of instantiating objects and placing them into other objects that depends on them.
Now, when we talk about plugins, we usually are talking too about dynamically loading new classes into a running app. Think on eclipse IDE. Its architecture was designed from the beginning to be "pluggable", like, you can download jars and eclipse will add them to the running application without the need of application restart.
In this case, if you want to build pluggable apps, in a sense of dynamic classloading, I'd recommend you not to go through this path, but to research subjects such as OSGI. One popular OSGI framework is http://felix.apache.org/
Another approach for application extension (we may call this pluggable too, somehow, I guess), depending on how your app is organized and what it does, is to develop a DSL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language) for it and extend it letting people adding scripts to it. Isn't something like this when a browser let you add pieces of funcionality written in javascript? Groovy makes DSL easier in some aspects, for java programmers. (see http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GROOVY/Writing+Domain-Specific+Languages)
If you want dynamic plugable systems OSGI can give you this, but OSGI its IMMO a over-complicated technology, use only if you are really sure that needs this dynamic plug-ability.
Other option for builds extensible systems its use de ServiceProvider mechanism, this is a core java mechanism, for example its the one that JDBC implementations use, you can put a JDBC driver in your classpath and the application can find it and use it without needing that you explicitly import the driver classes in your code.
This is an example of using ServiceProvider in your owns applications: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ext/basics/spi.html#limitations-of-the-service-loader-api
Its of course more limited than OSGI, but its very easy to use when you get the idea, and you don't need any external library because its a java core mechanism.
EDIT: about the libraries.
In runtime: With ServiceProvicer there is no separate classloaders (you can implement off course, but by default, in OSGI its implemented this separation), in runtime if your plugin need X class and this class is in the classpath all is ok, the limitation its that the main application and all the plugins use this version of the dependency (guice 3 for example) and you cannot have one plugin using X version and other plugin using X+2 version if this version are not compatible. (this is the famous hell .jar, and one of the principal motivations behind jigsaw project for example).
In compile time, include the dependency in your pom, ant build file, gradle build file or whatever build system your use as usual.

How can I include a jar file in a distinct package when deploying

I have an ant script that I use to build my J2EE application and create jar files. The problem is the following: Two jar files are necessary for the application to run.
commons-math-2.0.jar
commons-math-1.0.jar
However, I want to only use the 2.0 for a particular package inside the application with the rest of the application using 1.0. How can I build the application to only use the 2.0 version for example with a package name such as com.naurus.eventhandler.risk? Again, I'm using an Ant script, but if there's an easier way to do this sort of thing I'm willing to experiment. Thanks!
If the two jars contain different classes/packages there should be no problem to have all of them in the application classpath. It is then a matter of discipline not to use the classes from the one jar in the other package.
However I guess these two jars contain mostly the same classes/methods? There are many ways of using different versions of the same classes:
Using different ClassLoader instances. I would not qualify it as "easy", far from it means opening the door to a bunch of nasty bugs. (can be helped using a tool like OSGi)
Splitting the application in two processes, these process being launched in the same Ant target and using any mean (CORBA, RMI, REST, etc.) to communicate.
I would not advise using any of these methods though. It would probably be simpler to make all your packages use the same version. Is there any specific difficulty in doing so?
That will be problematic since both JAR files will end up in the same classpath when you deploy your J2EE application. You could achieve what you are trying to attempt with OSGI bundles, which allow each package to have separate dependencies. However, that is a relatively large refactoring of your application.
IMO, it would be best to either:
a) Duplicate the features you need from 2.0 (if the number is small and the license allows it, e.g., package individual classes).
or
b) Spend the time to upgrade the entire application to 2.0
You could use the manisfest in your jar to define the classpath.
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/jar/manifestindex.html
Although honestly it seems a bit convoluted, but it is your requirement.

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