Can I weave aspect into same maven module it was defined in and into a 3rd party dependency?

Question

I have a multimodule maven project with the following setup of relevant modules:

• root
  • commons-app
    • backend
    • frontend

Module frontend is built into war and deployed on Tomcat. Module backend is a standard Java application packaged as jar. All I am trying to accomplish is to make the following aspect work (in both frontend and backend):

@Aspect
public class VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect {

    @Around("execution(* cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.*Facade.save(..))")
    public Object sanitizeSequenceOnSave(ProceedingJoinPoint pjp) throws Throwable {
        // ... some code
    }

    @Before("execution(* org.eclipse.persistence.internal.descriptors.ObjectBuilder.assignSequenceNumber(java.lang.Object, org.eclipse.persistence.internal.sessions.AbstractSession))")
    public void rememberAssignSequence(JoinPoint jp) {
        // .. some code
    }
}

This aspect is setup as a Spring bean in commons-app-context.xml like so:

<!-- enable aspects -->
<aop:aspectj-autoproxy />

<!-- Aspect for fixing corrupted database sequences. -->
<bean id="sequenceAspect" class="cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dao.VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect" />

With this setup the around advice is working properly, however the before advice is not triggered. From what I found I concluded I need to use aspectj-maven-plugin to weave to 3rd party libs. So I added the plugin into the pom.xml for commons-app module like so:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.5</version>
    <configuration>
        <source>1.7</source>
        <target>1.7</target>
        <complianceLevel>1.7</complianceLevel>
        <showWeaveInfo>true</showWeaveInfo>
        <verbose>true</verbose>
        <!-- Weave EclipseLink dependency -->
        <weaveDependencies>
            <weaveDependency>
                <groupId>org.eclipse.persistence</groupId>
                <artifactId>eclipselink</artifactId>
            </weaveDependency>
        </weaveDependencies>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>compile</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    <dependencies>
    </dependencies>
</plugin>

With this plugin before advice works, but around advice stops working. I have been struggling to set this up correctly so both advices work as expected, but to no avail. When building commons-app module log says both advices are woven:

--- aspectj-maven-plugin:1.5:compile (default) @ commons-app ---
Join point 'method-execution(void cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.ScheduleFacade.save(cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.scheduling.Schedule))' in Type 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.ScheduleFacade' (ScheduleFacade.java:127) advised by around advice from 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dao.VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect' (VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect.java:90)
Join point 'method-execution(void cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.DPUFacade.save(cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dpu.DPUTemplateRecord))' in Type 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.DPUFacade' (DPUFacade.java:123) advised by around advice from 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dao.VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect' (VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect.java:90)
Join point 'method-execution(void cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.DPUFacade.save(cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dpu.DPUInstanceRecord))' in Type 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.DPUFacade' (DPUFacade.java:185) advised by around advice from 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dao.VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect' (VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect.java:90)
Join point 'method-execution(void cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.PipelineFacade.save(cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.pipeline.Pipeline))' in Type 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.facade.PipelineFacade' (PipelineFacade.java:134) advised by around advice from 'cz.cuni.mff.xrg.odcs.commons.app.dao.VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect' (VirtuosoSequenceSanitizerAspect.java:90)
...

However, when I deploy frontend to Tomcat, only the before advice is triggered. How can I configure maven to always weave both advices?

Answer 1

My mistake, I actually found out, that the around advice is being triggered. I did not see this because the code did not do what I expected. Also, I thought it is not triggered because a debugger breakpoint was not hit. From a brief googling I found the reason...

If around advice is inlined, the debugger can't figure out what to do (we still have some JSR 45 related work to do in this area, and possibly so does the Eclipse debugger). To debug around advice, you also need to go to the project properties and turn off the "inline around advice" AspectJ compiler option. Debugging should then hopefully work as expected...