How to automate discovering dependency conflict

Question

The java application I develop should run on servers I have not direct access to. Sometimes dependency conflicts arise. I mean that on some servers the app works perfect and on other ones same application fails. And the errors indicate libraries version conflict. I would like the application informs about the library version conflict rather than just crashes with NoSuchFieldError , NoSuchMethodError , NoClassDefFoundError etc. I may obtain libraries list on the application building platform with mvn dependency:tree So, I need the application reads the libraries versions on platform where it runs, compare it with libraries list on building platform and report about versions mismatching. So, how the application could define libraries in runtime? Or maybe there exist more convenient way to automate dependency conflict discovering?

Answer 1

I believe you need resolve this kind of problem before deployment. You cannot rely on Running Tool to save. So I would suggest solve them at much earlier stage.

If you use maven to manage dependency. You can try below:

<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-enforcer-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.1</version>
        <configuration>
            <rules><dependencyConvergence/></rules>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
</plugins>

Then

mvn enforcer:enforce

You can read this good material