Category: maven

The problem of mixing library versions

Usually you wouldn’t mix versions. Build environments like Maven should handle this for you – although even maven can get things wrong.

Yesterday I was playing with Apache TomEE looking at migrating some webapp’s away from Apache Tomcat 7. The impetus for this was to get Rest services working and one of the TomEE profiles supports JAX-RS rest services. Tomcat only supports JAX-WS as thats in Java EE6 Web profile.

Anyhow, with the theory that the webapp’s should just run with minor config changes to the container (declaring datasources, that sort of thing) I installed TomEE and got Netbeans to deploy to it.

Bang!

None of the apps would deploy. They all complained about slf4j missing a method:

java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.slf4j.spi.LocationAwareLogger.log(Lorg/slf4j/Marker;Ljava/lang/String;ILjava/lang/String;[Ljava/lang/Object;Ljava/lang/Throwable;)V
    at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SLF4JLocationAwareLog.debug(SLF4JLocationAwareLog.java:133)
    at org.apache.http.impl.conn.tsccm.ThreadSafeClientConnManager$1.getConnection(ThreadSafeClientConnManager.java:221)
    at org.apache.http.impl.client.DefaultRequestDirector.execute(DefaultRequestDirector.java:401)
    at org.apache.http.impl.client.AbstractHttpClient.execute(AbstractHttpClient.java:820)

Now if you ever see this, it’s down to having mixed versions of slf4j in your classpath – and unlike Tomcat, TomEE uses the most recent version of slf4j.

The solution

Many hours later I find this article where someone had a similar problem last year: SLF4J Dependencies and LocationAwareLogger.log Method Not Found Exception.

Now my webapps also use the latest standalone tiles library for layout so after getting maven to show me the dependency tree (mvn dependency:tree) on the webapp it showed that I was pulling in an old slf4j version into the webapp.

So, with a minor change to the pom telling maven to exclude slf4j it finally worked.

Here’s the changes I ended up making to the pom:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.tiles</groupId>
  <artifactId>tiles-extras</artifactId>
  <!-- needed to exclude slf4j which causes incompatibilities -->
  <exclusions>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>slf4j-nop</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
    <exclusion>
      <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
      <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
    </exclusion>
  </exclusions>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
  <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
  <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

The first dependency is for tiles. The <version/> element is missing as I declare that in the project’s root pom and ensures all webapps use the same version.

The important bit is the <exclusions/> element, here we tell maven to exclude those artifacts from the war. There’s one or more <exclusion/> elements which contain just the <groupId/> and <artifactId/> elements – no <version/> here.

The second dependency is for slf4j. It’s here to allow any code provided by the war to have access to it. Again <version/> is missing as its in the root pom but we provide a <scope/> of provided. This tells maven it can use it for compiling but does not include it in the war.

Finally in the project’s other modules I just make sure that any pom with a reference to slf4j is also declared as provided so they don’t cause maven to include it either.

That’s about it. It only took me about 4 hours of hunting around to find the underlying cause. In the Windows world this is known as DLL Hell – well it can happen to any OS/Environment & it is hell when it strikes.

Notes:

  • If you use another logging library within your webapp then that shouldn’t be affected. log4j should just work, this problem appears just to be for slf4j.
  • If you use apache commons logging then you can declare that as provided if you wanted. This is because TomEE provides it at the container level as well as slf4j.

Manually downloading an artefact in Maven

Usually maven will download an artefact on it’s own however there are times when you need to do this manually – in this instance the local Nexus installation is down for maintenance so I had no choice but do it the hard way.

In this instance I needed the exec-maven-plugin which my local repository didn’t have but fortunately the maven-dependency-plugin allows you to download them:

 mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin:2.1:get \
     -Dartifact=org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:1.2 \
     -DrepoUrl=http://repo1.maven.org/maven2

All you need is to set artifact= to the required artifact & repoUrl to the remote repository – in this case Maven Central

Performing remote Maven 3 builds with NetBeans 7.0

This article covers how to get NetBeans to use a Maven installation on a remote server. This has been tested with Maven 3.0.2 but should work on any other version. It may also work for other IDE’s like Eclipse if you can get them to use an alternate maven installation other than the internal one.

Sometimes you may want to run maven on a remote machine from inside the NetBeans IDE. For me this is down to available memory on the local machine is limited enough on large projects that both NetBeans and Maven compete slowing the local machine down as it swaps the IDE in and out of main memory.

Another instance may be to perform builds on a standard OS (Linux in this case) rather than the OS running the IDE (OSX here).

Now this is pretty easy to implement. Here I have the IDE running on OSX and the builds on Linux (Ubuntu 10.10) but if you can get the prerequisites running in theory any OS should work.

Prerequisites

  • ssh access to both machines with public key authentication working
  • sshfs configured for mounting drives (you can use nfs or smb if you wish)
  • maven 3.0.2 installed on both machines – both machines need the same version

Setting up the environment

In this example:

  • sabrina – The local machine running NetBeans. It’s running OS X
  • kira – The remote machine which will run the builds. It’s running Ubuntu 10.10

Shared filesystems

The remote needs to have access to the local project directories for maven to work. As I have all development under a dev directory under home, on the remote machine I simply create a dev directory and then mount the local host from it using sshfs

<br />
peter@kira:~$ mkdir dev<br />
peter@kira:~$ sshfs peter@sabrina:dev dev<br />

If you have a custom settings.xml file, make sure it’s also present on the remote’s .m2 directory, i.e.

<br />
sabrina:~ peter$ scp .m2/settings.xml peter@kira:.m2<br />

Finally NetBeans needs access to the built artifacts, so to do this we mount the remotes .m2/repository locally. I use .m2/remoterepo for this

<br />
sabrina:~ peter$ mkdir .m2/remoterepo<br />
sabrina:~ peter$ sshfs peter@kira:.m2/repository .m2/remoterepo<br />

Maven

Next install your maven installation on both machines. I keep mine in the same place, but thats optional. For the purposes of this article I’m going to use /usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2

Next on the machine running NetBeans you need to create a duplicate installation /usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2-remote We need to have a copy for NetBeans to recognise it as a valid environment later on.

Now in this new installation we need to replace the /usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2-remote/bin/mvn script with the following:

<br />
#!/bin/bash<br />
#<br />
# Enable NetBeans 7.0 beta to run maven on a remote host</p>
<p># Pass the maven args as is<br />
MVN_ARGS=&quot;$@&quot;</p>
<p># The current directory, NetBeans does a cd so this will be the project<br />
# directory.<br />
#<br />
# If you need to translate the path between local and remote machines then<br />
# pass the output of pwd through sed first<br />
REMOTE_PROJECT_DIR=$(pwd)</p>
<p># Execute maven on remote host<br />
REMOTE_USER=peter<br />
REMOTE_HOST=kira</p>
<p># Location of remote maven installation<br />
REMOTE_MAVEN_HOME=/usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2</p>
<p># JAVA_HOME on remote machine<br />
REMOTE_JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/</p>
<p># ======================================<br />
# DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BEYOND THIS POINT<br />
# ======================================</p>
<p># Remote mvn command<br />
REMOTE_MVN=$REMOTE_MAVEN_HOME/bin/mvn</p>
<p># Build the commands to run remotely<br />
CMD=&quot;cd ${REMOTE_PROJECT_DIR};&quot;<br />
CMD=&quot;${CMD}export JAVA_HOME=${REMOTE_JAVA_HOME};&quot;<br />
CMD=&quot;${CMD}$REMOTE_MVN ${MVN_ARGS}&quot;</p>
<p># Now run the remote build<br />
echo<br />
echo ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
echo Executing remote build on $REMOTE_HOST as $REMOTE_USER<br />
echo Remote command: $CMD<br />
echo ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
echo<br />
exec ssh ${REMOTE_USER}@${REMOTE_HOST} &quot;${CMD}&quot;<br />

In this script you need to ensure that the settings are correct:

  • REMOTE_USER and REMOTE_HOST point to your remote host,
  • REMOTE_MAVEN_HOME is the location of where maven is installed on the remote host,
  • REMOTE_JAVA_HOME is the location of the JDK on the remote host.

Now you may need to alter the line defining REMOTE_PROJECT_DIR. Shown above it gets set to the directory containing the maven project on the local host. If this differs on the remote then you need to either change to translate this to the location on the remote.

For example I have my NetBeans projects under a directory called dev in my home directory. As this is OS X that becomes /Users/peter/dev however on Linux the path is /home/peter/dev

I get around this by on the remote simply creating a symlink for /Users pointing to /home but you could modify the script to do that for you.

Configuring NetBeans

The last step is getting NetBeans to use the new remote.

Start NetBeans and enter preferences Then the Miscellaneous tab and finally Maven:

  • Under Maven Home select Browse and select the dummy remote installation, in my case /usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2-remote
  • Under Local Repository select Browse and point it at .m2/remoterepo
  • Select OK

Now if you try to run any build you’ll now see it run on the remote machine and as far as NetBeans is concerned it’s running locally. For example in the NetBeans output window you should see something like the following:

<br />
cd /Users/peter/dev/misc/example; JAVA_HOME=/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home /usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2-remote/bin/mvn --batch-mode --lax-checksums --fail-fast --no-plugin-updates --batch-mode clean</p>
<p>------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
Executing remote build on 192.168.30.108 as peter<br />
Remote command: cd /Users/peter/dev/misc/example;export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/;/usr/local/apache/apache-maven-3.0.2/bin/mvn --batch-mode --lax-checksums --fail-fast --no-plugin-updates --batch-mode clean<br />
------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>Command line option -npu is deprecated and will be removed in future Maven versions.<br />
Scanning for projects...<br />
------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
Reactor Build Order:<br />

Future invocations

Once setup, whenever you restart either machines you simply need to mount each others drives before starting NetBeans as all the rest should then be setup.

<br />
sabrina:~ peter$ sshfs peter@kira:.m2/repository .m2/remoterepo<br />
peter@kira:~$ sshfs peter@sabrina:dev dev<br />

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