WARs that deploy on JBoss AS 6 and GlassFish 3.1 fail on AS 7 because of classpath scanning changes

To reproduce:

1. Download attached minimal WAR (as7-2077.war)
2. Deploy WAR to a fresh install of JBoss AS 6.0.0.Final. Hit http://localhost:8080/as7-2077. Should say 'success'
3. Deploy WAR to a fresh install of GlassFish 3.1. Hit http://localhost:8080/as7-2077. Should say 'success'
4. Deploy WAR to a fresh install of JBoss AS 7.0.0.Final. Deployment will fail

The deployment error is:

—

09:07:34,991 ERROR [org.jboss.msc.service.fail] (MSC service thread 1-2) MSC00001: Failed to start service jboss.deployment.unit."as7-2077.war".INSTALL
: org.jboss.msc.service.StartException in service jboss.deployment.unit."as7-2077.war".INSTALL: Failed to process phase INSTALL of deployment "as7-2077.
war"
at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitPhaseService.start(DeploymentUnitPhaseService.java:121)
at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1765)
at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$ClearTCCLTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:2291)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886) [:1.6.0_25]
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908) [:1.6.0_25]
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662) [:1.6.0_25]
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Error getting reflective information for class org.metawidget.jsp.tagext.html.spring.SpringMetawidgetTag
at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.reflect.DeploymentReflectionIndex.getClassIndex(DeploymentReflectionIndex.java:70)
at org.jboss.as.ee.component.EEModuleClassDescription$DefaultConfigurator.configure(EEModuleClassDescription.java:144)
at org.jboss.as.ee.component.EEClassConfigurationProcessor.deploy(EEClassConfigurationProcessor.java:100)
at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.DeploymentUnitPhaseService.start(DeploymentUnitPhaseService.java:115)
... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/context/MessageSource
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields0(Native Method) [:1.6.0_25]
at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredFields(Class.java:2291) [:1.6.0_25]
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields(Class.java:1743) [:1.6.0_25]
at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.reflect.ClassReflectionIndex.<init>(ClassReflectionIndex.java:57)
at org.jboss.as.server.deployment.reflect.DeploymentReflectionIndex.getClassIndex(DeploymentReflectionIndex.java:66)
... 8 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.context.MessageSource from [Module "deployment.as7-2077.war:main" from Service Module
Loader]
at org.jboss.modules.ModuleClassLoader.findClass(ModuleClassLoader.java:191)
at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassChecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:358)
at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClassChecked(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:330)
at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.performLoadClass(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:307)
at org.jboss.modules.ConcurrentClassLoader.loadClass(ConcurrentClassLoader.java:101)
... 13 more

—

We understand the error. The new JBoss AS 7 classpath scanning code is looking for EE annotations (such as @Stateless) inside the WAR, but some of the JARs in the WAR have optional dependencies (ie. an optional dependency on Spring).

However we don't believe this should fail the deployment. It didn't fail on JBoss AS 6 and it doesn't fail on GlassFish 3.1.

This issue is affecting other projects, such as Vaadin, not just Metawidget. For further discussion, see AS7-708.