Spring Boot - Can't get load time weaving with aspectj to work

Question

Could anyone please tell me why the aspect won't fire when using spring boot? I am trying to setup load time weaving with aspectj so that I can have private methods advised.

Here is the link to the barebones project - https://github.com/satb/spring_aop_test_project.git

Run the "App" class with "-javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument-4.1.0.RELEASE.jar" (or some other version of the lib on your computer) and run the curl command

curl -i http://localhost:8080/test-app/motd

The MyAspect class has an advice that should execute when the private method of MyService is called. But in this case, nothing happens.

When the application starts though, I see a message like this:

[AppClassLoader@58644d46] warning javax.* types are not being woven because the weaver option '-Xset:weaveJavaxPackages=true' has not been specified.

I tried following the suggestion from here to get it to work but that didn't help - Using @Autowired with AspectJ and Springboot

Answer 1

Okay, I took a quick look at your GitHub project. The POM is pretty weird, e.g. it does not contain any dependency on spring-instrument. Furthermore, you depend on aspectjweaver 1.8.2, but on aspectjrt 1.5.4. You should really use the same version for both.

Anyway, I experimented with different Java agents on the command line, and it seems that it is not enough to just use AspectJ weaver (result: exception) or just Spring Instrument (result: aspects do not work, just as you described). You need to use both:

java -javaagent:path/to/aspectjweaver-1.8.2.jar -javaagent:path/to/spring-instrument-4.1.0.RELEASE.jar ...

This works for me with your code and yields the following on the console when using Curl according to your description:

[AppClassLoader@58644d46] warning javax.* types are not being woven because the weaver option '-Xset:weaveJavaxPackages=true' has not been specified

  .   ____          _            __ _ _
 /\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __  __ _ \ \ \ \
( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
 \\/  ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| |  ) ) ) )
  '  |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
 =========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
 :: Spring Boot ::        (v1.1.6.RELEASE)

2014-09-08 13:09:54.489  INFO 1464 --- [           main] App                                      : Starting App on Xander-PC with PID 1464 (C:\Users\Alexander\Documents\java-src\SO_AJ_SpringBootPrivilegedAspect\target\classes started by Alexander in C:\Users\Alexander\Documents\java-src\SO_AJ_SpringBootPrivilegedAspect)
2014-09-08 13:09:54.513  INFO 1464 --- [           main] ationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext : Refreshing org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.AnnotationConfigEmbeddedWebApplicationContext@6771beb3: startup date [Mon Sep 08 13:09:54 CEST 2014]; root of context hierarchy
(...)
2014-09-08 13:09:56.257  INFO 1464 --- [           main] o.s.c.w.DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver     : Found Spring's JVM agent for instrumentation
2014-09-08 13:09:56.259  INFO 1464 --- [           main] o.s.c.w.DefaultContextLoadTimeWeaver     : Found Spring's JVM agent for instrumentation
Aspect of called
(...)
2014-09-08 13:09:56.779  INFO 1464 --- [           main] App                                      : Started App in 2.531 seconds (JVM running for 3.067)
2014-09-08 13:09:59.115  INFO 1464 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.a.c.c.C.[Tomcat].[localhost].[/]       : Initializing Spring FrameworkServlet 'dispatcherServlet'
2014-09-08 13:09:59.115  INFO 1464 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.s.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet        : FrameworkServlet 'dispatcherServlet': initialization started
2014-09-08 13:09:59.122  INFO 1464 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.s.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet        : FrameworkServlet 'dispatcherServlet': initialization completed in 7 ms
Aspect of called
Advising getter