The package javax.xml is accessible from more than one module

[slarse]

I get the error in the title in both Eclipse and VS Code (VS code uses an Eclipse backend for Java stuff), and the project refuses to compile. Apparently, a lot of stuff in javax.xml is distributed with the standard library (where it's in a module), but it appears as if dependencies that also have javax.xml in it. The dependency likely pre-dates Java 9, and so javax.xml is not in a module (it says "unknown module"), while it is in the standard library.

The only IDEA that I've found to work around this is IntelliJ, possibly due to better Maven integration than the others. Maven has no problem building the project.

[slarse]

I've narrowed it down to these two dependencies:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.sonarsource.java</groupId>
            <artifactId>java-checks</artifactId>
            <version>6.9.0.23563</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.sonarsource.java</groupId>
            <artifactId>sonar-java-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>6.9.0.23563</version>
        </dependency>

Now to figure out what to exclude.

[slarse]

I've spent more than two hours on this now, and I can't solve it. If the two dependencies listed above are removed, all is fine and dandy. But we need those dependencies. I even went as far as to exclude all transitive dependencies from those two dependencies, and the same error message still appears. I give up.

@monperrus @khaes-kth @fermadeiral @nharrand anyone got an idea? Currently, the only tool that can be used to develop Sorald is IntelliJ IDEA, and that's a big problem for me as it crashes constantly on my machine (I had ~15 crashes yesterday).

[slarse]

I can work around it for now (develop in VIM, build with Maven, debug with IDEA), but it would of course be preferable if we could solve the problem with Eclipse.

[khaes-kth]

@slarse what happens if you exclude ``javax.xml.*'' classes from those dependencies? It seems to be hard but possible to do so.

[slarse]

Tried that. Even excluding every dependency (i.e. groupId and artifactId to *). No dice.

[khaes-kth]

Tried that. Even excluding every dependency (i.e. groupId and artifactId to *). No dice.

Sad! Maybe the best option is to make IntelliJ work on your PC.

[slarse]

Tried that. Even excluding every dependency (i.e. groupId and artifactId to *). No dice.

Sad! Maybe the best option is to make IntelliJ work on your PC.

It works on and off. Some days are good, some days it crashes all the freaking time. And besides, we don't want the development of Sorald to be contingent on a specific IDE, that's not particularly good practice.

[khaes-kth]

we don't want the development of Sorald to be contingent on a specific IDE, that's not particularly good practice

Totally agree! We should find some solution.

[slarse]

I just had this happen in IntelliJ IDEA as well! Cleaning the project and recompiling caused the error to disappear. It's probably got something to do with the order of... something.

On a side note, I downgraded IDEA to an earlier version yesterday, and haven't had a crash since. So it seems I'm good for the time being. But yaeh, we should still try to fix this, but we can put it off until after the paper is due as I can now work again :)

[slarse]

Ok, I must fix this. Not only is IDEA still incredibly unstable for me (I'm suspecting an incompatibility somewhere with my new Ryzen 5900X), but it's also blocking #339 which in turn more or less blocks #205. To top it all off, I've had this issue occur in IDEA as well a few times.

I'll bang my head against this issue until I solve it, because it's a significant progress-blocker at this point.

[slarse]

I've further narrowed this down to the xml-apis dependency in sonarl-xml-parsing, which in turn is a dependency of several of the sonar-java artifacts.

[slarse]

I've figured out why excluding dependencies doesn't work: there are a bunch of javax.xml packages included in the sonar-java-plugin jarfile. That's a problem.

[slarse]

So, there are basically two solutions to this problem that I can come up with:

1. Don't use sonar-java-plugin. If we resort to that, I don't know how to support the @SuppressWarnings things. We'd have to implement that on our own. It may be a lot of work.
2. Vendor the entire sonar-java project, and perform the minimal modifications necessary to the pom files to not include those darn javax.xml packages into the jarfiles. That is to say, include it as a sub-project of Sorald. A downside is that we then definitely must adopt the LGPL license. Perhaps we ought to do that anyway, though, as Sorald might be considered a derivative product of sonar-java.

I'm giving up for today, though.

[slarse]

I've found another solution: packaging a jar-file for sonar-java-plugin without the xml-apis stuff, and then adding that as a system dependency in Maven. The only problem with that solution is that system dependencies are deprecated ...