When using mulitple Spring dependencies, the files from META-INF (from the Spring jars) overwrite each other in an executable jar-with-dependencies.

I have the same problem this is the code i used:

ApplicationContext pathXmlApplicationContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");

I build a jar using the maven assembly plugin.

When I try to execute de jar i get the following error:

BeanDefinitionParsingException: Configuration problem: Unable to locate Spring NamespaceHandler for XML schema namespace http://www.springframework.org/schema/context

I hope too, that is bug can be solved.

Best regards.

I'm also having the same isse. Any progress?

See also MASSEMBLY-209.

I'm also having the same exception, it most likely to be an issue with TX or AOP parser than anything else. I've heard that adding the below MANIFEST entries should do the trick but nothing happened:

<manifestEntries>
<Class-Path>.</Class-Path>
<Require-Bundle>org.springframework.bundle.spring,org.springframework.bundle.spring.aop,org.springframework.bundle.spring.beans,org.springframework.bundle.spring.context,org.springframework.bundle.spring.context.support,org.springframework.bundle.spring.core,org.springframework.bundle.spring.web,org.springframework.bundle.spring.webmvc
</Require-Bundle>
</manifestEntries>

any thoughts? I'm trying to use Spring + JPA with Hibernate as the EntityManager provider.

While this doesn't fix the underlying problem it does get you started:

Make a src/main/resources/META-INF/ directory
explode the spring.jar (the large one) and put the spring.handlers and spring.schemas files from there into the above directory

Now when your executable jar is built those two files will be the last ones copied over so they "win" and are included in the jar file.

A better fix would be to make a plugin that gets those two files from all the spring-xxx.jars and concats them together.

Chris Wilkes thanks for the comment! That fixed it for me!

I have been using Chris Wilkes workaround for this issue for a while now without a problem until today. I happened to switch from the SpringSource Tool Suite 2.2.1 SR01 to Eclipse 3.5 SR01 at the end of last week and since doing so, the files from src/main/resources/META-INF do not seem to be the files getting placed in the jar-with-dependencies. I need to narrow down which spring.handlers and spring.schemas are being used but they are not the ones I defined. In fact, I can say that the versions in target/classes after the packaging is run are correct but the versions in the actual jar are not. Is there a way to fix this?

I tried the following but the result was NO spring.handlers and spring.schemas files were in the resulting jar.:

<dependencySets>
<dependencySet>
<unpack>true</unpack>
<unpackOptions>
<excludes>
<exclude>**/spring.handlers</exclude>
<exclude>**/spring.schemas</exclude>
</excludes>
</unpackOptions>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependencySet>
</dependencySets>
<fileSets>
<fileSet>
<directory>$

</directory>
<includes>
<include>META-INF/spring.handlers</include>
<include>META-INF/spring.schemas</include>
</includes>
</fileSet>
</fileSets>

Thanks.

Keith

@Keith: looks like we have a very similar set-up; the difference is that in our case the "merged" spring.handlers and spring.schemas files (see Chris Wilkes' comment above) are kept in src/main/resources/META-INF, i.e. not generated automatically during the build phase. That's not quite so nice, but since a project's Spring dependencies are generally unchanging it's not that much work to keep these files up to date manually. The assembly descriptor section is then simply:

<dependencySets>
<dependencySet>
<unpack>true</unpack>
<unpackOptions>
<excludes>
<exclude>META-INF/spring.handlers</exclude>
<exclude>META-INF/spring.schemas</exclude>
...
</excludes>
</unpackOptions>
</dependencySet>
</dependencySets>

and the spring.handlers and spring.schemas file from src/main/resources/META-INF is included automatically.

@Andrew Phillip
I'm using the jar-with-dependencies pre-defined assembly descriptor. Is there someway to add the code in your comment to the maven-assembly-plugin section of my pom, or do I actually need to find and extract the jar-with-dependencies descriptor and manually alter it for my build to include this exclusion?

...

=/

Thanks,

-EK

This is in response to the problem of having the error:
Unable to locate Spring NamespaceHandler for XML schema namespace http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
I was getting this by running mvn assembly:assembly and then trying to run an executable jar file.
I found a solution to this problem.
1) Don't use mvn assembly:assembly. Instead use the Maven shade Plugin, which can accomplish the same thing.
2) In your \src\main\resources\META-INF, create 2 files: spring.handlers & spring.schemas
3) Go to your local maven repo, and then locate the org.springframework directory for the spring transaction package.
On Windows 7 this would be:
C:\Users\bsmith\.m2\repository\org\springframework\spring-tx\3.0.2.RELEASE\spring-tx-3.0.2.RELEASE.jar
[If you had a difference namespace error such as context, then go to the spring-context directory.
4) Open up the spring-tx-3.0.2.RELEASE.jar file, and then append your
\src\main\resources\META-INF\spring.handlers file with the data found in the jar file.
4B) Do the exact same thing for the spring.schemas file
5) Setup your pom.xml file as described by the maven-shade-plugin documentation.
All you have to do is add in the <plugin>...</plugin>
6) run: mvn package
7) again try: java -jar theprogram-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
8) If you get another namespace error, again APPEND your \src\main\resources\META-INF\spring.handlers
and spring.schemas file with the appropriate spring jar file.

Thanks to Bob Mier I could (temporarily) solve a similar problem with Spring Batch.

Similar set of circumstance except I was using maven to build an rpm. Everything works fine testing my Spring Batch project in Eclipse, but running the job on Linux after the rpm had been installed and I get the error.

"Unable to locate Spring NamespaceHandler for XML schema namespace http://www.springframework.org/schema/batch"

Following Bob's solution all I had to do was add my own spring.handlers and spring.schemas into my META-INF and copy the contents of both from both the Spring Core and Spring Batch jars.

However - issue still gets my vote !

Maven shade plugin (http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/) is a better choice for these kind of issues. It has various transformers which can handle these situations easily.

add the container descriptor handler 'metaInf-spring' to consolidate these files.

I am trying to use the beta 6 version which fixes this. But get this error

org.codehaus.plexus.component.repository.exception.ComponentLookupException: java.util.NoSuchElementException
role: org.apache.maven.artifact.resolver.ArtifactResolver
roleHint: project-cache-aware
at org.codehaus.plexus.DefaultPlexusContainer.lookup(DefaultPlexusContainer.java:238)
at org.codehaus.plexus.DefaultPlexusContainer.lookup(DefaultPlexusContainer.java:214)
at org.apache.maven.shared.repository.DefaultRepositoryAssembler.contextualize(DefaultRepositoryAssembler.java:721)
at org.codehaus.plexus.PlexusLifecycleManager.contextualize(PlexusLi

bob miers referred to http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/examples/resource-transformers.html

so his sentence: "All you have to do is add in the <plugin>...</plugin>" meant to do the part titled "Merging Content of Specific Files".

i ended up with such a configuration in the shade plugin:

<configuration>
<transformers>
<transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
<mainClass>org.mypackage.MyMainClass</mainClass>
</transformer>
<transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.AppendingTransformer">
<resource>META-INF/spring.handlers</resource>
</transformer>
<transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.AppendingTransformer">
<resource>META-INF/spring.schemas</resource>
</transformer>
</transformers>
</configuration>

thanks for the solution.

@Suresh - Unfortunately that error is bogus. It's something that slipped through in a maven-repository-builder release (used by the assembly plugin), and that component hasn't been re-released since.

It's not going to affect your build at all; you can safely ignore it.

This Error still appears for me.

When Using Spring 3.x and using the following Schemas:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
						http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
						http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
						http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd">

I used maven-assembly plugin together with maven 2.x

I "solved" ist by using the OneJar Plugin.
http://one-jar.sourceforge.net/

I tried all the hints about manually merging the context and schema files but nothing helped.
Is there a Version of the Assembly Plugin which can deal with this issue by itself?

I really want to go back using the assembly plugin.

I still have this issue with Spring 3.1.1-RELEASE and maven-assembly-plugin 2.3 in Maven 3.0.3. I went with Bernhard's solution because it did not require me to add any additional files to my project as a workaround.

The maven-shade-plugin supports this.
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/examples/resource-transformers.html#Merging_Content_of_Specific_Files_with_AppendingTransformer_and_XmlAppendingTransformer