Defensive error reporting when ConfigurationClassParser introspects declared methods via StandardAnnotationMetadata [SPR-13791]

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer opened SPR-13791 and commented

When there is a class missing from the classpath that is needed by some annotation metadata, the app blows up deep in the java.lang.Class. The exception is hard to interpret for Spring users because there is no indication what it was trying to do when it failed. Example:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
	at org.springframework.boot.maven.AbstractRunMojo$LaunchRunner.run(AbstractRunMojo.java:467)
	at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/thrift/TException
	at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
	at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2701)
	at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods(Class.java:1975)
	at org.springframework.core.type.StandardAnnotationMetadata.getAnnotatedMethods(StandardAnnotationMetadata.java:146)
	at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.doProcessConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:291)
	at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.processConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:231)
...

where it is clear that the classpath is missing something, but not why, because Spring never tells us what it was doing, so we never find out what class it was trying to introspect (probably some autconfig from Spring Boot in this case, but it's hard to say). Maybe ConfigurationClassParser or StandardAnnotationMetadata could catch the exception and rethrow with a message that indicates what they were doing at the time?

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Affects: 4.1.8, 4.2.3

Issue Links:

• AnnotationUtils provides poor diagnostics if getDeclaredAnnotations throws an exception [SPR-12325] #16930 AnnotationUtils provides poor diagnostics if getDeclaredAnnotations throws an exception
• AnnotatedElementUtils should leniently ignore TypeNotPresentExceptions (just like AnnotationUtils) [SPR-12889] #17487 AnnotatedElementUtils should leniently ignore TypeNotPresentExceptions (just like AnnotationUtils)

Referenced from: commits a36c0a5, bc492b9

Backported to: 4.1.9

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

We're catching any Throwable there now, re-throwing it as an IllegalStateException which indicates that we were trying to introspect annotated methods on a particular class.

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer commented

Splendid!