'default-merge' attribute value does not propagate to collection elements [SPR-7656]

[spring-projects-issues]

Chris Beams opened SPR-7656 and commented

collection elements in the beans schema (<list>, <set>, <map>, <props>, <array>) each expose a 'merge' attribute of type 'defaultable-boolean'. All such attributes should also explicitly set default="default", but these elements do not.

This violates expectations during parsing, as the parsing routine expects the default value to be the literal string "default", in which case the parent <beans> element's default values are interrogated as a fallback. Instead, these attributes default to empty string. Thus, if <beans default-merge="true"/> has been set, it never gets propagated to the individual collection elements, because the parsing routine didn't think it was necessary.

This appears to have been the case since as early as Spring 2.0. Apparently there aren't many folks using default-merge!

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Affects: 2.0 final

Referenced from: commits c7aaa85