News

Weld 4 and Jakarta EE 9

2020-5-13   release , jakarta   Matej Novotny

Weld Meets Jakarta EE 9

Most of you surely know that Jakarta EE 9 is on the horizon; slowly but steadily it is making its way into Java world. And we are not far behind, in fact we have just released Weld 4.0.0.Alpha2 which is an implementation of CDI 3.0! You heard that right, in Jakarta EE 9, all APIs have bumped their major versions; CDI turned 3.0 and so Weld version implementing that became 4.0. Hand in hand with it goes Weld API 4.0.Alpha1, also adapted to EE 9.

Some basic information about the release:

  • All the bits should be available in Maven Central at this point.

  • There is also .zip distribution as usual, see download page for more information.

  • No WildFly patch is provided this time around because WildFly does not yet have an EE 9 branch.

Working and Broken Parts

The only, yet considerably huge, change in APIs is (or at least should be) the swap from javax to jakarta packages. This comes with bunch of problems, for instance there is no EE server that could run on EE 9 with new packages yet. GlassFish is going to be first and they are working on integrating all the EE 9 reference implementations. There are some chicken-egg problems such as Weld requiring EE 9 server to execute CDI TCKs, but at the same time there is GlassFish needing Weld 4.0 to start operating with EE 9 in the first place. For this reason, our first few 4.0 releases are going to be marked as Alpha or Beta, they will not be fully tested and might be missing some parts that previous releases contained.

Here’s what’s working:

  • All testing that doesn’t require full EE container

  • Weld core implementation and API works as usual and is fully released

  • Weld examples work only partially, all those needing EE container have nowhere to be deployed

  • Weld SE works fully

  • Weld Probe should work so long as you are in SE

And here are the missing parts:

  • We cannot execute CDI TCKs until there are stable GlassFish build

    • We should be able to renew this pretty soon

  • Other in-container tests that we have (running on WildFly) are now disabled

  • Servlet parts of Weld are completely excluded from early releases

    • This is because there is currently no servlet working on EE 9, therefore we have nothing to adapt our internals to, yet

One big and sadly unanswered question is that of backward compatibility. In Jakarta itself, there seems to be a consensus of EE 9 not being backward compatible with EE 8. Weld 4 on its own will not work with applications written for Java EE 8 - basically with anything requiring old javax namespace packages. However, EE servers will be forced to adapt somehow, so I expect a tooling might eventually emerge that will allow to run legacy applications on newer servers. But that is yet to be seen and surely no sooner than after EE 9 release when other big servers start to adopt it.

Development Plans

Just to make things clear - we are planning on actively developing both, Weld 3 and Weld 4. We understand that EE server will need to take their time switching to Jakarta EE 9, all the more due to the aforementioned circumstances around backward compatibility. Therefore, both our versions will get their share of updates and bug fixes in the future!


Weld 3.1.4.Final

2020-3-28   release   Matej Novotny

New Weld version is here, say hello to Weld 3.1.4.Final. There are only few issues included in this release, so let’s take a look at them.

Fixes and improvements:

  • Weld Core

    • ObserverMethodConfigurator initialized by reading an AnnotatedType previously didn’t set the method as async when it should (WELD-2609)

    • Fixed observability of @Destroyed events for Conversation context when there are multiple WARs deployed (WELD-2610)

    • After a failed attempt to restore a conversation, Weld could omit firing @Initialized event; this is now working properly (WELD-2611)

    • Cleanup of stored conversations required unnecessarily many locks simultaneously which could lead to deadlock on some servers (WELD-2612)

    • Removed Unsafe usage as means of cracking open ClassLoader for proxy definition (WELD-2613)

      • This only helped to hide IllegalAccess warning on JDK 11 (which will now show again)

      • Starting with JDK 12 and newer, Unsafe doesn’t work at all making this solution obsolete

      • We’ve created (WELD-2619) in order to search for better solution that would work across all JDK versions

    • Using HttpSessionContext.destroy() could sometimes not destroy the instance if it wasn’t used in current request (WELD-2615)

    • Fix OSGi versions for EE dependencies (WELD-2616)

    • Properly close stream after reading weld.properties (WELD-2606)

WildFly Patch

This time around, the patch for WildFly 19.0.0.Final is available.

If you’re not familiar with patching WildFly, check the FAQ.


Weld 3.1.3.Final

2019-11-28   release   Matej Novotny

Weld 3.1.3.Final arrives along with Weld API 3.1.SP2. This is a minor update which had a main goal of swapping whole Weld internals from Java EE 8 to Jakarta EE 8.

Fixes and improvements:

  • Weld API/SPI

    • API was transferred to Jakarta EE GAVs (WELD-2598)

  • Weld Core

    • Core and whole testing was transferred to Jakarta EE GAvs (WELD-2598)

    • Properties inside beans.xml now support spec-descriptor-property-replacement on WildFly (WELD-2600)

    • Rolling updates delimiter is now correctly ignored for external bean archives (WELD-2596)

    • Allow for private final method in intercepted beans, these methods are then ignored during interception but Weld no longer blows up (WELD-2595)

  • Weld Servlet

    • Adjust Jetty attributes accordingly to how they were renamed (WELD-2597)

  • Other

    • Fix several misplaced licenses that were causing confusion (WELD-2599)

WildFly Patch

This time around, the patch for WildFly 18.0.1.Final is available.

If you’re not familiar with patching WildFly, check the FAQ.


Weld 3.1.2.Final

2019-8-6   release   Matej Novotny

Weld 3.1.2.Final is coming along with Weld API 3.1.SP1. It is another small release bringing in mainly bugfixes. One notable thing is that thanks to guys from Jetty, Weld 3.1.2.Final is ready to operate with lastest Jetty 9 as well as upcoming Jetty 10. Other than that we have tried to address some dodgy issues with possible race conditions and leaks - see for yourself!

Fixes and improvements:

  • Weld API/SPI

    • Fixed possible leak in Jandex index through SimpleServiceRegistry (WELD-2592)

      • This could only happen on application server supporting Jandex index and was only noticeable with a lot of application deployed at the same time

  • Weld Core

    • Fixed a case where some context event notification wouldn’t trigger observers due to race condition (WELD-2557)

    • Fixed rare IllegalAccessError problem during interception when methods had (package) private parameters from different methods (WELD-2583)

      • Such methods are now automatically ignored when creating intercepted subclasses

    • Attempted to fix a race condition that could happen when trying to concurrently initiate conversation ID generator (WELD-2585)

    • Weld now correctly disregards synthetic methods when considering proxyability (WELD-2586)

    • Correction to beans.xml parses when using Weld namespace (WELD-2591)

  • Weld SE

    • Improved classpath scanning to account for manifest file entries (WELD-2589)

    • javax.enterprise.inject.scan.implicit=true and org.jboss.weld.se.archive.isolation=false now work together correctly (WELD-2590)

  • Weld Servlet

    • Update Weld to new Jetty integration model prior to Jetty release (WELD-2587)

      • Weld 3.1.2.Final is ready to roll with to-be-released Jetty 9.4.x as well as Jetty 10.x

      • Of course we also kept legacy support in place, so even older version will still run

WildFly Patch

This time around, the patch for WildFly 17.0.1.Final is available.

If you’re not familiar with patching WildFly, check the FAQ.


Weld 3.1.1.Final

2019-5-7   release   Matej Novotny

Weld 3.1.1.Final is out, it is a rather small nonetheless important maintenance release. There is bunch of fixes present here; notably one for context propagation API that could cause some headaches with context seemingly not propagating. Moving on, we also have some improvements to asynchronous events on default executors or ordering on ProcessAnnotatedType events.

Fixes and improvements:

  • Weld API/SPI

  • Weld Core

    • WeldAlterableContext#clearAndSet() was incorrectly leaving some caches behind (WELD-2566)

    • Fix serializability issue with intercepted session beans having private methods (WELD-2574)

    • Asynchronous event notification on default executor should preserve TCCL (WELD-2573)

    • Fix ordering of ProcessAnnotatedType events via @Priority (WELD-2568)

    • Small optimization for distributed environment when bean index is empty (WELD-2577)

    • Custom InjectionTarget now invokes any present dispose() (WELD-2580)

    • Align behaviour of self-invocation of otherwise intercepted method from within private final observer method (WELD-2571)

  • Weld SE

    • Allow to specify custom DiscoveryStrategy via service loader mechanism (WELD-2578)

  • Other

    • Update tooling around documentation builds (WELD-2564)

    • Update JBoss classfilewriter to newer version working on JDK 12 (WELD-2572)

    • Fix Probe functional tests on latest Firefox (WELD-2579)

WildFly Patch

This time around, the patch for WildFly 16.0.0.Final is available.

If you’re not familiar with patching WildFly, check the FAQ.