Consider adding Spring Boot 2 support

[snicoll]

Relates to spring-projects/spring-boot#13510

We are reviewing our community starters list and a quick look here suggests that this starter doesn’t yet support Spring Boot 2.

Can you please let us know if/when you plan to support Spring Boot 2?

Thanks!

[christophd]

Thanks for letting me know in advance. The upgrade to boot 2.x is planned. I will check over the weekend what it takes for us to upgrade. I am positive that it is no major effort and that we can do the upgrade as soon as possible.

Have to check for the transitive dependencies that use Spring weather they already did the upgrade to 5.x and boot 2.x 😄

[klr8]

Just wanted to add that Citrus Simulator v1.0.2 does not work with Spring Boot 2: the SimulatorEndpointAdapter always times out waiting for a scenario response: "No response for scenario".
Of course it works fine with Spring Boot 1.5.x.

[svettwer]

Hi!

The changes @christophd has made are currently in the master but not released yet.

BR,
Sven

[ektadubey]

Hi,
Are these changes releases in any latest versions?
i am using 'citrus-core', version: 2.8.0 with spring boot version 2.0.2, and getting timeout from mocked servers created in citrus after spring boot upgrade.

[svettwer]

Hi!

The update is currently in the master but not released yet.

BR,
Sven

[tomastak]

Hi,

do you have any estimation of when new release becomes available?

Thanks.

[svettwer]

Hi!

We've no released planned but as this update is requested more often, I'll see what I can do in the near future.

BR,
Sven

[tomastak]

Hi,

thank you for considering of new release.

Meanwhile, I would like to use SNAPSHOT version of citrus-simulator but I couldn't find it in your snapshot repo. All other projects are there. Could you please check?

Thank you.
Tomas

[bbortt]

Hi @svettwer
Why won't you release 1.1.0? Is there anything left to do? I'd also contribute to the project..
Because using the SNAPSHOT-version is not an option for me - "latest is not a version".
Many thanks

[svettwer]

Hi @bbortt!

Why won't you release 1.1.0?

It is simply lack of time and resources as I am working on customer projects.
We had some issues with the Spring Boot 2 update but I currently can not remember whether they have been solved or not. This is something I would have to investigate before a release makes sense to me.

BR,
Sven

[boskoop]

+1

Hi @svettwer! It would be really nice to be able to upgrade to Spring Boot 2, since 1.5 is not compatible with Java 11+. Do you have any estimation for a potential release?

Thanks
-- Christian

[bbortt]

Hi @svettwer , @boskoop

As stated

I'd also contribute to the project..

We also partially tested the SOAP-Simulator using the 1.1.0-SNAPSHOT version. Only issue we found so far:

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.support.BeanDefinitionOverrideException: Invalid bean definition with name 'messageDispatcherServlet' defined in class path resource [org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/webservices/WebServicesAutoConfiguration.class]: Cannot register bean definition [Root bean: class [null]; scope=; abstract=false; lazyInit=false; autowireMode=3; dependencyCheck=0; autowireCandidate=true; primary=false; factoryBeanName=org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.webservices.WebServicesAutoConfiguration; factoryMethodName=messageDispatcherServlet; initMethodName=null; destroyMethodName=(inferred); defined in class path resource [org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/webservices/WebServicesAutoConfiguration.class]] for bean 'messageDispatcherServlet': There is already [Root bean: class [null]; scope=; abstract=false; lazyInit=false; autowireMode=3; dependencyCheck=0; autowireCandidate=true; primary=false; factoryBeanName=com.consol.citrus.simulator.starter.ws.SimulatorWebServiceAutoConfiguration; factoryMethodName=messageDispatcherServlet; initMethodName=null; destroyMethodName=(inferred); defined in class path resource [com/consol/citrus/simulator/starter/ws/SimulatorWebServiceAutoConfiguration.class]] bound.

We temporarily fixed it using the following configuration:

# Overriding 'messageDispatcherServlet' by Citrus
spring.main.allow-bean-definition-overriding = true

We had some issues with the Spring Boot 2 update but I currently can not remember whether they have been solved or not.

Was it something similar to our problem? I'll try to reproduce it in a separate fork.
And if there's anything else I'd be happy to help 👍

BR, Timon

[svettwer]

Hi!👋
Thx a lot for your help. Unfortunately I had no time to investigate this any further. Any PR on this will be highly appreciated! As soon as we have a stable spring boot 2 version, I'll release the next simulator version.

BR,
Sven

[snicoll]

It would be really nice to be able to upgrade to Spring Boot 2, since 1.5 is not compatible with Java 11+

@boskoop FTR that's certainly not the main reason why one should consider upgrading. Spring Boot 1.5.x will be EOLed this summer on August 1st.

As soon as we have a stable spring boot 2 version

@svettwer what do you mean by "stable spring boot 2 version"? Is there something in Spring Boot that's not working for you? If so, please let us know.

[svettwer]

Hiho!

Sorry, was in a hurry a little bit today. Spring Boot itself works fine. I build up apps with Spring Boot on a regular basis and love it. What I wanted to say with a "stable spring boot 2 version" was, that I want to make sure, we have a stable citrus simulator version using spring boot 2 before I release. My last info from a contributor was, that there were some issues while upgrading. I will have a look and try to understand what the issue was... Because the current master build on travis is stable. 🤔

[bbortt]

Upgrading to the snapshot version was (at least in our project) no problem at all.. except the little hack I mentioned here.

[snicoll]

Upgrading to the snapshot version was (at least in our project) no problem at all.

Having to enable bean overriding is actually a problem, a library should not force you to do that. It's potentially hiding a potential problem as well so I agree this should be fixed before cutting a release here.

[svettwer]

Hi everybody!

So according to the EOL of Spring Boot 1.5.x (thx @snicoll for the reminder), we will release a Spring Boot 2 version of the simulator in July. From tomorrow on, I am on a motorcycle road trip until June 30th. Because there is not much space for luggage, I will not be able to take a laptop with me. I'll take care of this issue and finalize the release, when I am back. Every PR concerning this topic would be highly appreciated.

Until then: Thx for all the help and the great conversation. 😄 👍

BR,
Sven

[bbortt]

Hi everybody

I will be pretty active today.. updating all POMs as well as the build, preparing for openjdk11 on Travis.
Also it's now clear to me why the "bean-overriding problem" exists. I will fix this as well.
As long as the build is green after all, I think we will be ready for the major release 🚀

See you in the PR's :)

[boskoop]

Hi @svettwer!

The last update is now almost a month old. Do you have any update on a potential release date for the next version?

Thanks
-- Christian

[bbortt]

and another month has gone to hell. still no merged pullrequest nor feedback on those. I really think this project is a great way to automate a certain level of testing. but it is no longer useful as it is. the code is out of date with an unknown amount of bugs fixed in the newer dependency versions. and almost unmaintained.
I can just repeat my thoughts: please recruit more active (and probably company-external) maintainers. if you cannot actively maintain and develop the project, maybe we can together!
another way is to fork, rebrand and republish the whole source. which will be necessary in the near future, because we cannot continue with a deprecated source. I really wish this will not happen, but I'm honestly close to doing it.

[svettwer]

Hi!
We are working on exactly that. Opening up the project to external developers and this task currently consumes all the time I can currently spent on the project as it is a political task with a lot more people involved as in the development.

BR
Sven

[bbortt]

huh.. "political issues" in programming sounds familiar to me.. big company, right? ;)
anyway, sounds great. looking forward to be part of the community!

[svettwer]

big company, right?

It depends on how you define "big" 😉
But believe me, I'll be so glad if we're through this.

[boskoop]

Hey @svettwer

Any update on the next release? The PRs are now waiting for almost 1/4 of a year.

Thanks
-- Christian

[svettwer]

Hi,

sorry but still in customer projects and no time left to invest in the community requirements atm.
The process of opening up the project to external developers is not finished as well but we've some progress there.

BR
Sven

[boskoop]

Thanks for the quick response. Good to see that there's some progress going on.

Could you please at least give some projection on when these community patches will be merged and released, or at least, looked at (1 month, end of 2019, spring 2020, summer 2020, even later)? Because we are seriously thinking about forking the project and releasing our own Spring Boot 2 compatible version. Meanwhile, we've migrated our entire codebase to Java 11 and the simulators running on Java 8 are a huge impediment.

Thanks
-- Christian

[svettwer]

Hi,

sorry I can't give you any estimation. It highly depends on how we are opening the project and how fast this will be done. As I will not get the time to work on this project, I would not expect a release in the short or mid term. If a fork suites your requirements, it would be way to go. After we've opened the project a merge of both could be a possible scenario and a base for further collaboration.

BR
Sven

[bbortt]

thanks for the detailed information. we'll be working on a maintained fork then, I think. will update you with more information as fast as we have it.

[bbortt]

So, we're working on an active fork in @postfinance/citrus-simulator. Could you at least update your README.md with an according information @svettwer ? Would be great!

@snicoll you can track our progress within the corresponding project.

[svettwer]

Hi @bbortt, @boskoop, @snicoll,

due to the fork, we were able to convince our management to open up the simulator project now to a set of external contributors.

For more information, please read https://github.com/postfinance/citrus-simulator/issues/22.

Summary: We're going to release in the next week with an updated version of the simulator

BR
Sven

[boskoop]

Hi @svettwer, @christophd

Spring Boot 2.0 / Spring Framework 5.0 does not support JDK 11 at the moment. See https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/wiki/Spring-Framework-Versions#jdk-version-range

As the tests are running, there seem to be no major issues with using a later Spring Framework (5.1) for the moment, even with the core Citrus framework only building against Spring 5.0.

Do you think this is too much risk, even with the tests backing basic functionality? For our use case, we need JDK 11 support.

BR
-- Christian

[snicoll]

Spring boot 2.0 is EOL so I wouldn’t suggest building against it. Going with 2.1 at this point is what you should do anyway.

[bbortt]

I must admit I was pretty confused as well.. because of the passing tests. @boskoop would you be able to verify our simulators running with the 2.1 version (custom build) tomorrow?

[boskoop]

I tested the current PR #65 version (a603536) with our simulators and the tests were green. We are mainly simulating SOAP services in the component I tested.

Versions used (everything with citrus-core 2.8.0):
Spring Boot 2.1.9.RELEASE / Spring Framework 5.1.10.RELEASE / JDK8 -> ok
Spring Boot 2.1.9.RELEASE / Spring Framework 5.1.10.RELEASE / JDK11 -> ok

I also tested the following constellations:
Spring Boot 2.0.9.RELEASE / Spring Framework 5.0.13.RELEASE / JDK8 -> ok
Spring Boot 2.2.0.RELEASE / Spring Framework 5.2.0.RELEASE / JDK8 -> ok
Spring Boot 2.2.0.RELEASE / Spring Framework 5.2.0.RELEASE / JDK11 -> ok

I did not test Spring Boot 1.5, but I think if someone needs this, they can always use version 1.0.x of the simulator.

@christophd @svettwer:
Do you still think citrus-core currently not building against Spring Framework 5.1 is an issue here?

Another option would be building against Spring Boot 2.0 in the JDK 8 build and building against Spring Boot 2.1 or 2.2 in the others. But I'm on the same page as @snicoll here, we should no longer build against Spring Boot 2.0.

BR
-- Christian

[svettwer]

I would not risk an incompatibility here. For your builds, the constellation of versions might work out. For other projects it might not. As here is a Citrus framework release required for a customer project, I'll try to include a spring update there. Therefore I would suggest to wait with the Spring Boot 2.2.0 release until the next Citrus release. I expect the release to be done until the End of 2019. That bein said, another citrus simulator release could take place in January 2020.

BR
Sven

[christophd]

@boskoop @bbortt If we release the simulator bits with Spring 5.0.13 you can still use a newer version of Spring in your simulator project. You add the citrus-simulator-starter as usual but bump the Spring versions used to a newer version that fits your JDK requirements.

If needed you can also exclude older Spring artifacts explicitly when adding the citrus-simulator-starter dependency like

    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.consol.citrus</groupId>
      <artifactId>citrus-simulator-starter</artifactId>
      <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
          <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
          <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
      </exclusions>
    </dependency>

With that in place you should be able to run the simulator with newer Spring versions right away until we do so officially with a citrus core update.

[snicoll]

@christophd there is no need to "exclude older" artifacts for dependency management to work properly. That's neither a Spring Boot nor a citrus related topic but I thought it was worth mentioning.

I don't see the point of releasing a new version of the simulator that builds against an EOL version of the framework. Could you please reconsider?

[christophd]

@snicoll of course dependency management in Maven/Gradle takes care of that in general. So if you bump your project to a newer Spring version Maven/Gradle takes care and there is no need for explicit exclusion, agreed. In some cases you might want to exclude some bits (stuff that is not used in the project and therefore is not bumped to a newer version in dependency management) in order to not end up having too much of a version mix in the classpath.

Regarding the EOL version I also see that it is not the best option to go with. We should definitely also update the Citrus core framework which will be done soonish according to @svettwer. Once that is done we can also align to the latest versions in this simulator project.

[snicoll]

In some cases you might want to exclude some bits (stuff that is not used in the project and therefore is not bumped to a newer version in dependency management) in order to not end up having too much of a version mix in the classpath.

I don't think that's the best forum to have that conversation but I disagree with that. You don't "exclude" an artifact to avoid getting an old version. I believe spring-core is required for citrus-simulator-starter to work so excluding it the way you've indicated is the wrong thing to do IMO.

in order to not end up having too much of a version mix in the classpath.

You shouldn't have any version mix on the classpath at all. That's what dependency management is for.

Once that is done we can also align to the latest versions in this simulator project.

Thank you, much appreciated.

[christophd]

@snicoll I think we are on the same page here. Using spring-core was a bad example.

Citrus core framework 2.8.0 is compiled and tested with Spring 5.0.8 at the moment. My concern is if we update the citrus-simulator to use Spring Boot 2.1.9 and Spring 5.1.10 but keep Citrus 2.8.0 we might run into issues as the Citrus core bits might not be able to work with the latest Spring versions out of the box.

[boskoop]

Since the 1.1 version is released, I think this issue can be closed. Updating to SB 2.2 etc. should be tracked in a new issue.

What do you think @snicoll @svettwer @christophd ?

[bbortt]

@christophd please close this. It's all good for Spring Boot v2. v3 being worked on in #162.