JAX-WS and Maven2

Another day in Maven hell! I still don't get how something as simple as trying to get the JAX-WS tool wsgen to work can be this difficult.

My goal was to create a set of webservices starting from Java code and to then generate the necessary WSDL and XSD files. The first part, creating a domain model, annotating it with JAXB and then generating an XSD was simple enough. The second step kept me busy for the remaining 75% of the day.

I just added a new dependeny to my pom.xml and annotated my service with @WebService. But after triggering a recompile I got an error, the WebService annotation couldn't be found. Checked the pom.xml again, but it contained the correct dependency. So what was going wrong. Afer trying out some suggestions made in various blogs and forum posts, the problem remained. I even got to a point in which the code compiled, but when I executed the wsgen goal it would fail with the message: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/jws/WebService. What? How can this be? By this time I was cursing away at Maven again: how can this bloody thing, that is supposed to make my life easier, always fuck up in the most incomprehensible way possible?

Then a little speck of light in the distance: it seems that the JAX-WS libraries are spread over a maven1 and a maven2 repository and that there are problems with some versions and references to other libraries that JAX-WS uses. The solution to all this:

• empty out your local repository
• add the java.net maven1 and maven2 repositories to your pom.xml
• add a dependency to JSR-181 to the wsgen plugin

After doing all this I was able to compile, build and generate everything I wanted (it only took way too much time).

The pom.xml I used:

 xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
 4.0.0
 EDRL
 Preprocessor
 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
 
  
   
    com.sun.tools.jxc.maven2
    maven-jaxb-schemagen-plugin
    1.1
    
     
      process-sources
      
       ${project.build.directory}/schemas
       
        be/test/*.java
       
       ${basedir}/src/main/java
       true
      
      
       generate
      
     
    
   
   
    org.codehaus.mojo
    jaxws-maven-plugin
    1.12
    
     
      
       wsgen
      
      generate-sources
      
       be.test.service.TestService
       true
       true
       true
      
     
    
    
     
     
      javax.jws
      jsr181-api
      1.0-MR1
     
    
   
  
 
 
  
   maven-repository.dev.java.net
   Java.net Repository for Maven 1
   http://download.java.net/maven/1/
   legacy
  
  
   maven2-repository.dev.java.net
   Java.net Maven 2 Repository
   http://download.java.net/maven/2
  
 
 
  
   maven2-repository.dev.java.net
   Java.net Maven 2 Repository
   http://download.java.net/maven/2
  
 
 
  
   javax.xml
   jaxb-impl
   2.1
  
  
   javax.xml.bind
   jaxb-api
   2.2
  
  
   com.sun.xml.ws
   jaxws-rt
   2.1.3
  
  
   javax.jws
   jsr181-api
   1.0-MR1
  
 
 
  1.5
  1.5