Dealing with Xerces hell in Java Maven

Question

In my office  the mere mention of the word Xerces is enough to incite murderous rage from developers  A cursory glance at the other Xerces questions on SO seem to indicate that almost all Maven users are  quot touched quot  by this problem at some point   Unfortunately  understanding the problem requires a bit of knowledge about the history of Xerces    History  Xerces is the most widely used XML parser in the Java ecosystem   Almost every library or framework written in Java uses Xerces in some capacity  transitively  if not directly    The Xerces jars included in the official binaries are  to this day  not versioned   For example  the Xerces 2 11 0 implementation jar is named xercesImpl jar and not xercesImpl-2 11 0 jar   The Xerces team does not use Maven  which means they do not upload an official release to Maven Central   Xerces used to be released as a single jar  xerces jar   but was split into two jars  one containing the API  xml-apis jar  and one containing the implementations of those APIs  xercesImpl jar    Many older Maven POMs still declare a dependency on xerces jar   At some point in the past  Xerces was also released as xmlParserAPIs jar  which some older POMs also depend on   The versions assigned to the xml-apis and xercesImpl jars by those who deploy their jars to Maven repositories are often different   For example  xml-apis might be given version 1 3 03 and xercesImpl might be given version 2 8 0  even though both are from Xerces 2 8 0   This is because people often tag the xml-apis jar with the version of the specifications that it implements   There is a very nice  but incomplete breakdown of this here   To complicate matters  Xerces is the XML parser used in the reference implementation of the Java API for XML Processing  JAXP   included in the JRE  The implementation classes are repackaged under the com sun   namespace  which makes it dangerous to access them directly  as they may not be available in some JREs   However  not all of the Xerces functionality is exposed via the java   and javax   APIs  for example  there is no API that exposes Xerces serialization   Adding to the confusing mess  almost all servlet containers  JBoss  Jetty  Glassfish  Tomcat  etc    ship with Xerces in one or more of their  lib folders    Problems Conflict Resolution For some -- or perhaps all -- of the reasons above  many organizations publish and consume custom builds of Xerces in their POMs   This is not really a problem if you have a small application and are only using Maven Central  but it quickly becomes an issue for enterprise software where Artifactory or Nexus is proxying multiple repositories  JBoss  Hibernate  etc     For example  organization A might publish xml-apis as   lt groupId gt org apache xerces lt  groupId gt   lt artifactId gt xml-apis lt  artifactId gt   lt version gt 2 9 1 lt  version gt   Meanwhile  organization B might publish the same jar as   lt groupId gt xml-apis lt  groupId gt   lt artifactId gt xml-apis lt  artifactId gt   lt version gt 1 3 04 lt  version gt   Although B s jar is a lower version than A s jar  Maven does not know that they are the same artifact because they have different groupIds  Thus  it cannot perform conflict resolution and both jars will be included as resolved dependencies   Classloader Hell As mentioned above  the JRE ships with Xerces in the JAXP RI   While it would be nice to mark all Xerces Maven dependencies as  lt exclusion gt s or as  lt provided gt   the third-party code you depend on may or may not work with the version provided in JAXP of the JDK you re using   In addition  you have the Xerces jars shipped in your servlet container to contend with  This leaves you with a number of choices  Do you delete the servlet version and hope that your container runs on the JAXP version  Is it better to leave the servlet version  and hope that your application frameworks run on the servlet version  If one or two of the unresolved conflicts outlined above manage to slip into your product  easy to happen in a large organization   you quickly find yourself in classloader hell  wondering which version of Xerces the classloader is picking at runtime and whether or not it will pick the same jar in Windows and Linux  probably not   Solutions  We ve tried marking all Xerces Maven dependencies as  lt provided gt  or as an  lt exclusion gt   but this is difficult to enforce  especially with a large team  given that the artifacts have so many aliases  xml-apis  xerces  xercesImpl  xmlParserAPIs  etc     Additionally  our third party libs frameworks may not run on the JAXP version or the version provided by a servlet container  How can we best address this problem with Maven   Do we have to exercise such fine-grained control over our dependencies  and then rely on tiered classloading   Is there some way to globally exclude all Xerces dependencies  and force all of our frameworks libs to use the JAXP version   UPDATE  Joshua Spiewak has uploaded a patched version of the Xerces build scripts to XERCESJ-1454 that allows for upload to Maven Central   Vote watch contribute to this issue and let s fix this problem once and for all

User · Answer

What would help  except for excluding  is modular dependencies   With one flat classloading  standalone app   or semi-hierarchical  JBoss AS EAP 5 x  this was a problem   But with modular frameworks like OSGi and JBoss Modules  this is not so much pain anymore  The libraries may use whichever library they want  independently   Of course  it s still most recommendable to stick with just a single implementation and version  but if there s no other way  using extra features from more libs   then modularizing might save you   A good example of JBoss Modules in action is  naturally  JBoss AS 7   EAP 6   WildFly 8  for which it was primarily developed   Example module definition    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  UTF-8   gt   lt module xmlns  urn jboss module 1 1  name  org jboss msc  gt       lt main-class name  org jboss msc Version   gt       lt properties gt           lt property name  my property  value  foo   gt       lt  properties gt       lt resources gt           lt resource-root path  jboss-msc-1 0 1 GA jar   gt       lt  resources gt       lt dependencies gt           lt module name  javax api   gt           lt module name  org jboss logging   gt           lt module name  org jboss modules   gt           lt  -- Optional deps -- gt           lt module name  javax inject api  optional  true   gt           lt module name  org jboss threads  optional  true   gt       lt  dependencies gt   lt  module gt    In comparison with OSGi  JBoss Modules is simpler and faster  While missing certain features  it s sufficient for most projects which are  mostly  under control of one vendor  and allow stunning fast boot  due to paralelized dependencies resolving    Note that there s a modularization effort underway for Java 8  but AFAIK that s primarily to modularize the JRE itself  not sure whether it will be applicable to apps

User · Answer

My friend that s very simple  here an example    lt dependency gt       lt groupId gt xalan lt  groupId gt       lt artifactId gt xalan lt  artifactId gt       lt version gt 2 7 2 lt  version gt       lt scope gt   my-scope  lt  scope gt       lt exclusions gt           lt exclusion gt           lt groupId gt xml-apis lt  groupId gt           lt artifactId gt xml-apis lt  artifactId gt       lt  exclusion gt   lt  dependency gt    And if you want to check in the terminal windows console for this example  that your maven tree has no problems   mvn dependency tree -Dverbose   grep --color always      conflict       less -r

User · Answer

Frankly  pretty much everything that we ve encountered works just fine w  the JAXP version  so we always exclude xml-apis and xercesImpl

User · Answer

There is another option that hasn t been explored here  declaring Xerces dependencies in Maven as optional    lt dependency gt      lt groupId gt xerces lt  groupId gt      lt artifactId gt xercesImpl lt  artifactId gt      lt version gt     lt  version gt      lt optional gt true lt  optional gt   lt  dependency gt    Basically what this does is to force all dependents to declare their version of Xerces or their project won t compile  If they want to override this dependency  they are welcome to do so  but then they will own the potential problem   This creates a strong incentive for downstream projects to    Make an active decision  Do they go with the same version of Xerces or use something else  Actually test their parsing  e g  through unit testing  and classloading as well as not to clutter up their classpath     Not all developers keep track of newly introduced dependencies  e g  with mvn dependency tree   This approach will immediately bring the matter to their attention   It works quite well at our organization  Before its introduction  we used to live in the same hell the OP is describing

User · Answer

There are 2 11 0 JARs  and source JARs   of Xerces in Maven Central since 20th February 2013  See Xerces in Maven Central  I wonder why they haven t resolved https   issues apache org jira browse XERCESJ-1454     I ve used    lt dependency gt       lt groupId gt xerces lt  groupId gt       lt artifactId gt xercesImpl lt  artifactId gt       lt version gt 2 11 0 lt  version gt   lt  dependency gt    and all dependencies have resolved fine - even proper xml-apis-1 4 01   And what s most important  and what wasn t obvious in the past  - the JAR in Maven Central is the same JAR as in the official Xerces-J-bin 2 11 0 zip distribution   I couldn t however find xml-schema-1 1-beta version - it can t be a Maven classifier-ed version because of additional dependencies

User · Answer

Apparently xerces xml-apis 1 4 01 is no longer in maven central  which is however what xerces xercesImpl 2 11 0 references   This works for me    lt dependency gt     lt groupId gt xerces lt  groupId gt     lt artifactId gt xercesImpl lt  artifactId gt     lt version gt 2 11 0 lt  version gt     lt exclusions gt       lt exclusion gt         lt groupId gt xerces lt  groupId gt         lt artifactId gt xml-apis lt  artifactId gt       lt  exclusion gt     lt  exclusions gt   lt  dependency gt   lt dependency gt     lt groupId gt xml-apis lt  groupId gt     lt artifactId gt xml-apis lt  artifactId gt     lt version gt 1 4 01 lt  version gt   lt  dependency gt

User · Answer

You should debug first  to help identify your level of XML hell  In my opinion  the first step is to add   -Djavax xml parsers SAXParserFactory com sun org apache xerces internal jaxp SAXParserFactoryImpl -Djavax xml transform TransformerFactory com sun org apache xalan internal xsltc trax TransformerFactoryImpl -Djavax xml parsers DocumentBuilderFactory com sun org apache xerces internal jaxp DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl   to the command line  If that works  then start excluding libraries  If not  then add   -Djaxp debug 1   to the command-line

User · Answer

Every maven project should stop depending on xerces   they probably don t really  XML APIs and an Impl has been part of Java since 1 4  There is no need to depend on xerces or XML APIs  its like saying you depend on Java or Swing   This is implicit   If I was boss of a maven repo I d write a script to recursively remove xerces dependencies and write a read me that says this repo requires Java 1 4   Anything that actually breaks because it references Xerces directly via org apache imports needs a code fix to bring it up to Java 1 4 level  and has done since 2002  or solution at JVM level via endorsed libs  not in maven

User · Answer

You could use the maven enforcer plugin with the banned dependency rule   This would allow you to ban all the aliases that you don t want and allow only the one you do want   These rules will fail the maven build of your project when violated   Furthermore  if this rule applies to all projects in an enterprise you could put the plugin configuration in a corporate parent pom   see    http   maven apache org plugins maven-enforcer-plugin  http   maven apache org enforcer enforcer-rules bannedDependencies html

User · Answer

I guess there is one question you need to answer   Does there exist a xerces  jar that everything in your application can live with   If not you are basically screwed and would have to use something like OSGI  which allows you to have different versions of a library loaded at the same time  Be warned that it basically replaces jar version issues with classloader issues      If there exists such a version you could make your repository return that version for all kinds of dependencies  It s an ugly hack and would end up with the same xerces implementation in your classpath multiple times but better than having multiple different versions of xerces   You could exclude every dependency to xerces and add one to the version you want to use   I wonder if you can write some kind of version resolution strategy as a plugin for maven  This would probably the nicest solution but if at all feasible needs some research and coding   For the version contained in your runtime environment  you ll have to make sure it either gets removed from the application classpath or the application jars get considered first for classloading before the lib folder of the server get considered   So to wrap it up  It s a mess and that won t change

User · Answer

I know this doesn t answer the question exactly  but for ppl coming in from google that happen to use Gradle for their dependency management   I managed to get rid of all xerces Java8 issues with Gradle like this   configurations       all  exclude group   xml-apis      all  exclude group   xerces

[java] Dealing with "Xerces hell" in Java/Maven?

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