Software Build and Release Specialist

Wow.   This little problem was extremely tricky to detect — mainly due to WebLogic’s wlappc ANT Task’s poor documentation.   In one of the projects I’m working on, there is a need to pre-compile WebLogic JSP so it will be much faster during deployment/runtime and we can catch any potential errors early.   Previously, this step of the compilation has never given us any problem until when it decides to act up and freezes or hangs certain builds.  However, it was never an issue since restarting the build usually fixes it.

That is, until recently when the freezing/hanging started to happen on a consistent basis.  Here’s the snippet of the ANT Task:

<wlappc source=”${some.base.dir}” classpath=”${some.dir}/some_class.jar” verbose=”true”/>

The ANT output during build time is this and is where it freezes:

[wlappc] [jspc] Compiling /path/to/jsp/foo.jsp

Then after searching high and low on BEA’s site, I came upon this page (Here) which describes the task in detail.  I then realized I should add in idlVerbose=”true”.  Once I’ve added that, this is the output I got from the build:

[wlappc] [jspc] Compiling /path/to/jsp/foo.jsp
[wlappc] WARNING: unable to get an input stream for jar:file:/path/to/some/jar/WEB-INF/lib/struts.jar!/
[wlappc] java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/bcelx/classfile/ClassParser
[wlappc] [...]

Muuuuch better.  To fix it, now I know I need to explicitly define bcel*.jar in the classpath.  Here’s the modified ANT task:

<wlappc source=”${some.base.dir}”
classpath=”${some.dir}/some_class.jar;
${env.ANT_HOME}/lib/bcel-5.1.jar”
verbose=”true” idlVerbose=”true”/>

Notice the difference?  Yeah, that fixed it…