QuickFIX/J Distribution - Maven Plugin Failure - maven-assembly-plugin

[vinipx]

[Not QuickFix/J specific, but might be happening to others]

I'm having failure in QuickFIX/J Distribution when trying to build project after cloning it:

[INFO] QuickFIX/J Distribution ............................ FAILURE [ 4.636 s]

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-assembly-plugin:3.4.2:single (bin-assembly) on project quickfixj-distribution: Execution bin-assembly of goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-assembly-plugin:3.4.2:single failed.: NullPointerException -> [Help 1]
...
org.apache.maven.lifecycle.LifecycleExecutionException: Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-assembly-plugin:3.4.2:single (bin-assembly) on project quickfixj-distribution: Execution bin-assembly of goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-assembly-plugin:3.4.2:single failed.
Caused by: org.apache.maven.plugin.PluginExecutionException: Execution bin-assembly of goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-assembly-plugin:3.4.2:single failed
...
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException

Maven and Java versions:

Apache Maven 3.8.6 (84538c9988a25aec085021c365c560670ad80f63)
Maven home: C:\dev\apache-maven-3.8.6
Java version: 11.0.16.1, vendor: Oracle Corporation, runtime: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-11.0.16.1

java --version
java 11.0.16.1 2022-08-18 LTS
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment 18.9 (build 11.0.16.1+1-LTS-1)

I've tried to use mvn clean install and even removing .m2/repository

Is anyone facing similar issue?

[vinipx]

I'm afraid it is connected to this plugin definition in pom.xml:
https://github.com/quickfix-j/quickfixj/blob/master/quickfixj-distribution/pom.xml#L149

[chrjohn]

Omit the-PskipBundlePlugin option.

[vinipx]

Thanks!

[chrjohn]

Don't know what triggers this, though. It was working before I did some updates to several Maven plugins, but don't know which exactly.

[vinipx]

Yeah, I couldn't find the root cause too. I'd suggest for us to handle in a separate bug issue maybe.
I decided to publish here in discussion as someone else might face similar issue and can find workaround/fix meanwhile.

[chrjohn]

There was a similar problem here which manifests in a slightly different error message:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/73664485/4962355

[the-thing]

I also encoutered this problem while looking at something else.

The problem is slf4j-jdk14 test scope dependency in quickfixj-core. There is a special case for it in distribution.xml assembly file. When running skipBundlePlugin profile this file doesn't exist.

[DEBUG] Adding dependency artifact org.slf4j:slf4j-jdk14:jar:2.0.6.
[DEBUG] Adding artifact: org.slf4j:slf4j-jdk14:jar:2.0.6 with file: null to assembly location: lib/slf4j-jdk14-2.0.6.jar.

I think the fix for this is to actually modify assembly instruction to exclude slf4j-jdk14 from the build. I assume this is not required to be a part of org.quickfixj-3.0.0-SNAPSHOT-bin.zip. Is that correct? I'm not sure how this affects examples.

BTW. Sligtly different question. What are the expected differences in the generated artifacts when running with/without skipBundlePlugin profile?

[chrjohn]

I just removed the slf4j-jdk14 dependency from the examples and the build succeeded. I also was able to start the examples standalone-JARs (which seemed to be the reason why that dependency was included). There was a message that no default logging implementation was found and it was logged to console, which I think is OK.

[david-gibbs-ig]

@chrjohn , great, when you make a PR for that I will copy...

[chrjohn]

Hi @david-gibbs-ig
here is the PR, if it succeeds I will merge to master.
#615

[chrjohn]

@david-gibbs-ig merged #615

[david-gibbs-ig]

@chrjohn thank you

[david-gibbs-ig]

I was just struggling with the same issue @the-thing , thanks for commenting. It was making me despondent.

@chrjohn I don't think I fully understand the bundle plugin but I think it's not helpful for the general (non OSGI) case. Can we consider removing it in version 3 ? We could perhaps make an example for users that want to use OSGI.

I have made an experimental branch where I remove it from all but quickfixj-all but like I say I'm just experimenting. I think it need not be the responsibility of the QFJ project to build the bundles. If I understand what I have read about Apache Felix, an OSGI user could do this in their application project or in another project derived from QuickFIX/J. I think a good argument for what I am proposing is "How do we even know if QuickFIX/J is building the bundle correctly"?

[chrjohn]

Hmm, actually the maven-bundle-plugin should cause no problems. Maybe we could change it that is has to be explicitly enabled?
I don't know how much users really use this in an OSGi environment actually, but I know that there are some frameworks or app servers that use OSGi bundles (e.g. Apache Karaf, Glassfish/Payara).

"How do we even know if QuickFIX/J is building the bundle correctly"

I am just relying on that the plugin works. Just as I am doing with the Javadoc plugin for example. :)

[david-gibbs-ig]

Hi, @chrjohn I think that the maven-bundle-plugin interferes with the normal packaging of the jars, even when that profile is not being run. This is why those duplicate class warnings occur. I've got a branch to see if I can show this is the case (working on the javadoc first). I think that maven-bundle-plugin is an overhead for the QuickFIX/J project that isn't a library project's responsibility. I'm certainly no expert but QFJ 3 is a great opportunity for housekeeping and the way I see it, the bundle plugin imposes complexity on all users.

[chrjohn]

I don't know every library but in some of our projects we used OSGi bundles and were happy when we didn't need to transform the used JAR files to bundles first. It is no rocket science but also takes some time to get started and you have to repackage the JAR file and push it to some internal repository then.
From what I recall it could be that Apache libs were mostly OSGi bundles (probably because of Apache ServiceMix or Camel).