AspectJ Load-time Weaving in Spring with method-call pointcuts?

Question

I'm experimenting with AspectJ Load-time Weaving in Spring as described here. I've checked out the sample code, and it works as advertised.

But when I try to change the pointcut of the PerformanceAdvice from execution(..) to call(..) semantics, the advice no longer gets executed.

I know that Spring AOP does not support call(..) semantics, but that should not apply here since I'm using AspectJ LTW (the sample code successfully works with non-Spring-managed objects).

Can anyone shed some light?

Update: In order to confirm that LTW works, I added the following system properties to the argline configuration in pom.xml:

-Dorg.aspectj.weaver.showWeaveInfo=true
-Daj.weaving.verbose=true
-Dorg.aspectj.tracing.enabled=true
-Dorg.aspectj.tracing.factory=default
-Dorg.aspectj.tracing.file=/tmp/aspectj-trace.txt

Now the output of running mvn test contains the following lines:

[AppClassLoader] info AspectJ Weaver Version 1.5.3 built on Wednesday Nov 22, 2006 at 11:18:15 GMT
[AppClassLoader] info register classloader sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader@5acac268
[AppClassLoader] info using configuration 
    /private/tmp/aspectj-load-time-weaving/target/test-classes/META-INF/aop.xml
[AppClassLoader] info register aspect org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.PerformanceAdvice
[AppClassLoader] weaveinfo Join point 
    'method-execution(void org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.Processor.process())' 
    in Type 'org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.Processor' (Processor.java:38) 
    advised by around advice from 
    'org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.PerformanceAdvice' (PerformanceAdvice.java)
[AppClassLoader] weaveinfo Join point 
    'method-execution(void org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.
        PerformanceAdvice.aspectjLoadTimeWeavingExamples())' 
    in Type 'org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.PerformanceAdvice' (PerformanceAdvice.java:37)
    advised by around advice from 
    'org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.PerformanceAdvice' (PerformanceAdvice.java)

So it seems that AspectJ has picked up the PerformanceAdvice and found 2 join points to weave it in. But if I replace execution(..) with call(..) in the PerformanceAdvice's join point and run maven again, the output does not contain those last 2 lines, and the advice is not executed. The AspectJ trace contains lots of log statements, but I couldn't make much sense out of it. I scanned it for errors or warnings, but found none.

(I assume that I should be able to simply replace execution(..) with call(..), because their syntax is described as execution(MethodPattern) and call(MethodPattern) respectively in the AspectJ programming guide).

I also tried using a more recent version of AspectJ (1.6.6), but to no avail.

Espen Espen · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-22T22:06:37

The call designator should work with your pointcut.

Is your calling class in the package specified in the weaver element?

<weaver>
        <!-- only weave classes in this package -->
        <include within="org.springbyexample.aspectjLoadTimeWeaving.*" />
</weaver>

If the calling and execution class is in different packages and it works with execution, then fix the aop.xml file or refactor your calling class to be in the given package.

AspectJ Load-time Weaving in Spring with method-call pointcuts?

2 Answers