maven aspectj weaving NullPointerException

Question

I have a Spring MVC application made with MyEclipse, which contains generated sources as well as my own sources, plus aspects that I defined on the generated classes. Everything compiled fine in MyEclipse, but I want now to switch to Maven in order to use a continuous integration server.

I have been fiddling with the pom.xml for a long while now, and I hit a wall I can't seem to get around. When maven gets to the moment of weaving aspects, I get the following exception (just the first few lines for brevity):

[INFO] [aspectj:compile {execution: default}]
[INFO] Showing AJC message detail for messages of types: [error, warning, fail]
[ERROR] ABORT
May 30, 2016 11:48:05 AM org.aspectj.weaver.tools.Jdk14Trace info
INFO: Dumping to /var/atlassian/application-data/bamboo/xml-data/build-dir/OW-BUIL-JOB1/./ajcore.20160530.114805.876.txt
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD ERROR
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] AJC compiler errors:
abort ABORT -- (NullPointerException) null
null
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.aspectj.org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.apt.dispatch.AnnotationDiscoveryVisitor.resolveAnnotations(AnnotationDiscoveryVisitor.java:238)
    at org.aspectj.org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.apt.dispatch.AnnotationDiscoveryVisitor.visit(AnnotationDiscoveryVisitor.java:217)
    at org.aspectj.org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.ast.TypeDeclaration.traverse(TypeDeclaration.java:1348)
    at org.aspectj.org.eclipse.jdt.internal.compiler.ast.CompilationUnitDeclaration.traverse(CompilationUnitDeclaration.java:748)
    ...

My pom.xml is too long to paste it here, but the build part is as follows (let me know if you want to see some of the dependencies):

<build>
    <directory>bin</directory>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>build-helper-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.7</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>add-source</id>
                    <phase>generate-sources</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>add-source</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <sources>
                            <source>src</source>
                            <source>generated</source>
                            <source>resources</source>
                        </sources>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.1</version>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.6</source>
                <target>1.6</target>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>main/</exclude>
                    <exclude>test/</exclude>
                </excludes>
                <useIncrementalCompilation>true</useIncrementalCompilation>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.8</version>
            <configuration>
                <showWeaveInfo>true</showWeaveInfo>
                <source>1.6</source>
                <target>1.6</target>
                <Xlint>ignore</Xlint>
                <complianceLevel>1.6</complianceLevel>
                <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
                <verbose>true</verbose>
                <aspectLibraries>
                    <aspectLibrary>
                        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
                        <artifactId>spring-aspects</artifactId>
                    </aspectLibrary>
                </aspectLibraries>
            </configuration>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>process-sources</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>compile</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <webXml>${project.basedir}/WebRoot/WEB-INF/web.xml</webXml>
                <warName>oligoWorld</warName>
                <outputDirectory>${project.basedir}</outputDirectory>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
    <pluginManagement>
        <plugins>
            <!--This plugin's configuration is used to store Eclipse m2e settings only. It has no influence on the Maven build itself. -->
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
                <artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
                <version>1.0.0</version>
                <configuration>
                    <lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                        <pluginExecutions>
                            <pluginExecution>
                                <pluginExecutionFilter>
                                    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                                    <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                                    <versionRange>[1.8,)</versionRange>
                                    <goals>
                                        <goal>compile</goal>
                                    </goals>
                                </pluginExecutionFilter>
                                <action>
                                    <execute />
                                </action>
                            </pluginExecution>
                        </pluginExecutions>
                    </lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </pluginManagement>
</build>

Anybody seeing anything wrong or missing that might cause that exception? FYI, the version of my aspectj dependencies (aspectjrt, aspectjtools and aspectjweaver) is 1.8.7.

Does this help? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11044213/internal-compiler-error-in-eclipse-npe — Tamas Rev, May 30 '16 at 10:41
Thanks, but not really. The compilation is happening on a continuous integration server (Bamboo), not inside Eclipse, so those steps don't apply. — risoldi, May 30 '16 at 10:57

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 31 '16 at 12:45

I seem to have found the problem. In the pom.xml I had the dependency for aspectjtools listed with all the other dependencies in the dependencies section of the pom file, outside the aspectj-maven-plugin definition. Instead, I moved it inside the plugin; also, I changed the aspectj libraries' version to 1.8.9, as it seems 1.8.7 exhibits a bug similar to what I have found. After this, everything worked. So here's my modified definition for the aspectj-maven-plugin for reference:

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>1.8</version>
            <dependencies> <!-- The change that fixed it starts here... -->
                <dependency>
                    <groupId>org.aspectj</groupId>
                    <artifactId>aspectjtools</artifactId>
                    <version>1.8.9</version>
                </dependency>
            </dependencies> <!-- ...and ends here. -->
            <configuration>
                <showWeaveInfo>true</showWeaveInfo>
                <source>1.6</source>
                <target>1.6</target>
                <Xlint>ignore</Xlint>
                <complianceLevel>1.6</complianceLevel>
                <encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
                <verbose>true</verbose>
                <aspectLibraries>
                    <aspectLibrary>
                        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
                        <artifactId>spring-aspects</artifactId>
                    </aspectLibrary>
                </aspectLibraries>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>

maven aspectj weaving NullPointerException

1 Answers1