NetBeans and JAX-WS

A failing hard disk can be a positive thing: at least it forces you to learn new things. After fixing the project I just wrote about, I went straight to the next one, checked it out, fixed all the paths on the database configuration files (this time I was on the ball), cleaned and built, tested it and everything was fine. A big smile was spreading on my face, as now I could really go back to the real stuff.

Until I ran it.

20-mag-2010 17.53.23 com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletContextListener contextInitialized
INFO: WSSERVLET12: JAX-WS context listener initializing
20-mag-2010 17.53.27 com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletContextListener contextInitialized
GRAVE: WSSERVLET11: failed to parse runtime descriptor: javax.xml.ws.WebServiceException: Unable to create JAXBContext
javax.xml.ws.WebServiceException: Unable to create JAXBContext

(blah blah blah jabber jabber jabber blah blah blah)

Caused by: java.security.PrivilegedActionException: com.sun.xml.bind.v2.runtime.IllegalAnnotationsException: 2 counts of IllegalAnnotationExceptions
my.wonderful.package.MyWonderfulClass is an interface, and JAXB can't handle interfaces.

(ariblah blah blah jabber jabber jabber blah blah blah)

Actually the blah blah part was much longer, but it left me quite disappointed. Everything had always worked fine, and we hadn't touched that codebase for quite a long time. It must have been something about configuration, but NetBeans didn't complain about missing references.

I googled for a while to get some clues, and everything I found required an intricate scaffolding over our classes. Too bad.

The only remaining culprit could only be NetBeans, as Marco pointed out - no, I won't pass to Eclipse, though. And that's final. Neither to Maven, at least for the time being :-)

Comparing a 6.7.1 installation with a 6.8 I found out that the first reported the JAX-WS 2.1 library in the dependencies of the project, while the latter the 2.2 version. At first I missed it, as the first place I checked was obviously the project.properties, that only reported a reference to the ${libs.jaxws21.classpath} variable, which was the version we were actually using. As setting up another project NetBeans kindly informed me that I was using JAX-WS 2.2 but the features I required needed the 2.1 version and I had to use the endorsing mechanism, I was quite ready for something like that, but it all passed by silently and I (wrongly) felt reassured.

I really had to double check... as I realized comparing the build.properties file used by the two IDEs, that referred to the same variable but had different path elements. What a fool! The more I find out, the less that I know...