JBoss 4.2.2 GA to JDK 7 (or JDK 6) migration

    JBoss 4.2.2 GA was released long time ago. Despite that fact, some mature projects that run in production are deployed on mentioned JBoss. JBoss 4.2.2 GA is quite old, however it can be hosted on JDK7. Some minor changes are necessary, but they can be introduced quite easy. I decided to create this migration guide in order to save someone's day.

I had to deal with two major problems. First one occurred during start up phase of JBoss 4.2.2 GA on JDK7 with EAR file that contained our application. Beautiful exception appeared in server's logs. It was potentially connected with JAXB:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot build JAXB context
 at org.jboss.ws.metadata.builder.jaxws.JAXWSMetaDataBuilder
.createJAXBContext(JAXWSMetaDataBuilder.java:955)
 at org.jboss.ws.metadata.builder.jaxws.JAXWSWebServiceMetaDataBuilder
.buildWebServiceMetaData(JAXWSWebServiceMetaDataBuilder.java:156)
 at org.jboss.ws.metadata.builder.jaxws.JAXWSServerMetaDataBuilder
.setupProviderOrWebService(JAXWSServerMetaDataBuilder.java:52)
 at org.jboss.ws.metadata.builder.jaxws.JAXWSMetaDataBuilderEJB3
.buildMetaData(JAXWSMetaDataBuilderEJB3.java:78)
 at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.UnifiedMetaDataDeploymentAspect
.create(UnifiedMetaDataDeploymentAspect.java:71)
...
Caused by: org.jboss.ws.WSException: Failed to create JAXBContext
 at org.jboss.ws.core.jaxws.CustomizableJAXBContextFactory
.createContext(CustomizableJAXBContextFactory.java:116)
 at org.jboss.ws.metadata.builder.jaxws.JAXWSMetaDataBuilder
.createJAXBContext(JAXWSMetaDataBuilder.java:951)
 ... 82 more
Caused by: com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.IllegalAnnotationsException: 
1 counts of IllegalAnnotationExceptions
java.lang.StackTraceElement does not have a no-arg default constructor.
 this problem is related to the following location:
  at java.lang.StackTraceElement
  at public java.lang.StackTraceElement[] java.lang.Throwable.getStackTrace()
  at java.lang.Throwable
  at private java.lang.Throwable[] myinterfaces.jaxws.ApplicationExceptionBean.suppressed
  at myinterfaces.jaxws.ApplicationExceptionBean
 at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.IllegalAnnotationsException$Builder
.check(IllegalAnnotationsException.java:102)
 at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl
.getTypeInfoSet(JAXBContextImpl.java:438)
 at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.JAXBContextImpl
.(JAXBContextImpl.java:286)
 at com.sun.xml.bind.v2.ContextFactory
.createContext(ContextFactory.java:139)
 at com.sun.xml.bind.api.JAXBRIContext
.newInstance(JAXBRIContext.java:105)
 at org.jboss.ws.core.jaxws
.CustomizableJAXBContextFactory.createContext(CustomizableJAXBContextFactory.java:110)
 ... 83 more

Two important clues from the stacktrace are made bold. After skimming through JBoss JIRA, I managed to find out that the problem was with JBossWS Native implementation: JIRA comment. There is the commit that solves the problem connected with the fact that getSuppressed() method was added to Throwable in JDK7. Everything was clear now, but our JBoss 4.2.2 GA works with JBossWS Native 3.0.1-native-2.0.4.GA. Upgrading WS provider to the jbossws-native-3.1.2 was not an option because of the risk. I decided to solve the problem in a different way. I downloaded the source code of the JBossWS Native 3.0.1-native-2.0.4.GA and I added the following line:

excludedGetters.add("getSuppressed");

to the org.jboss.ws.core.jaxws.AbstractWrapperGenerator class (as it is seen in the presented commit). Next, I compiled that class in isolation (meaning that I placed AbstractWrapperGenerator in a separate folder together with classes/interfaces referenced from that class and I used javac to obtain AbstractWrapperGenerator.class) and I injected AbstractWrapperGenerator.class into jbossws-core.jar (you can use e.g. Total Commander to do that [just remember about the license]). JBoss 4.2.2 GA started on JDK7 without any errors. Everything seemed fine until first SOAP request which resulted in:

java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: setProperty must be overridden by all subclasses of SOAPMessage
 at javax.xml.soap.SOAPMessage.setProperty(SOAPMessage.java:439)
 at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.SOAPMessageImpl.(SOAPMessageImpl.java:83)
 at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.MessageFactoryImpl.createMessage(MessageFactoryImpl.java:217)
 at org.jboss.ws.core.soap.MessageFactoryImpl.createMessage(MessageFactoryImpl.java:195)
 at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.RequestHandlerImpl.processRequest(RequestHandlerImpl.java:447)
 at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.RequestHandlerImpl.handleRequest(RequestHandlerImpl.java:284)
 at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.RequestHandlerImpl.doPost(RequestHandlerImpl.java:201)
 at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.RequestHandlerImpl.handleHttpRequest(RequestHandlerImpl.java:134)
 at org.jboss.wsf.stack.jbws.EndpointServlet.service(EndpointServlet.java:84)
 at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:803)
        ...

It was the second problem. This exception is related to the fact that JDK7 (as well as JDK6) is shipped with JAX-WS implementation (Metro) and the newer version of JAX-WS has additional methods defined in the interfaces. JVM bootstrap classloader takes the precedence over application classloader and it loads JAX-WS interfaces from rt.jar. However, JVM has, so called, endorsed mechanism, which allows to load particular classes before classes from rt.jar. JBoss 4.2.3-GA-jdk6 was migrated to JDK 6 with the use of that mechanism. After copying the following files:

jboss-saaj.jar, 
jboss-jaxrpc.jar, 
jboss-jaxws.jar,
jboss-jaxws-ext.jar, 
jaxb-api.jar 

from jboss/server/default/lib and jboss/lib to jboss/lib/endorsed directory everything started to work properly.

I hope it will help someone.