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.

Answer 1

Are you using the actual aspectJ agent? Like passing to your JRE at runtime

-javaagent:lib/aspectjweaver.jar

I found that this was the only way I was able to get aspectJ AOP rather than spring AOP

Answer 2

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.