Sometimes you use a library that has a bug. Or maybe it doesn’t has a bug but you want to change something. Of course if it is an open source you can get the sources… build them … with your change and so on. However this first takes a lot of time and second you need the sources.
What you usually want .. is to just replace one class.. or few classes with something custom… maybe add a line .. or remove a line and so on.
Yesterday… I had an issue with jboss-logging. The version I was using was 3.2.0Beta1 and it turns out that using this version and log4j2 2.0 final basically meant that no log is send to log4j2. The reason was a null pointer exception that was catched in jboss logging class called Log4j2Logger. The bug I submitted is here https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBLOGGING-107 and it was fixed at the same day. However I will use it as an example since I didn’t knew when this will be fixed.. and I didn’t want to wait till it is fixed.
So I was thinking what I want.. to take the jboss-logging jar and replace the file called Log4j2Logger. Basically as you can see in the bug I wanted to replace line 54 to be :
instead of :
this.logger.log(null, loggerClassName, translatedLevel,
parameters == null || parameters.length == 0 ? this.messageFactory.newMessage(message) :
this.messageFactory.newMessage(String.valueOf(message), parameters),
thrown);
to become :
this.logger.log(translatedLevel, parameters == null || parameters.length == 0 ? this.messageFactory.newMessage(message) : this.messageFactory.newMessage(String.valueOf(message), parameters),
And that’s it. Of course I didn’t wanted to do this manually with zip 
but to use maven as well.
So what I did:
1) I created a new maven project and added as dependency the jboss-logging.
2) I set the new project groupid and artifactid as the ones in the dependancy.
I set the version to be something like “3.2.0.Beta1-log4j2-npe-fix” so I added –log4j2-npe-fix
3) I used a plugin that takes the original version, unpacks the original jar in target WITHOUT the class I want to patch in this case Log4j2Logger.class and added my own implementation in the sources of my project.
4) And well thats all… ones I build.. my patched class will go in target.. and the original classes except the class I want to patch will also go in target and voala.. I will have a library which is patched.
The full pom.xml looks like this:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<project xmlns=”http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0″
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xsi:schemaLocation=”http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd”>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>org.jboss.logging</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-logging</artifactId>
<version>3.2.0.Beta1-log4j2-npe-fix</version>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.jboss.logging</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-logging</artifactId>
<version>3.2.0.Beta1</version>
<type>jar</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>unpack</id>
<phase>generate-sources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>unpack</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<artifactItems>
<artifactItem>
<groupId>org.jboss.logging</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-logging</artifactId>
<version>3.2.0.Beta1</version>
<type>jar</type>
<overWrite>true</overWrite>
<outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/classes</outputDirectory>
<excludes>
**/Log4j2Logger.class
</excludes>
</artifactItem>
</artifactItems>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
and that’s it.. the only thing left is to update my project to use my version 3.2.0.Beta1-log4j2-npe-fix instead of the original 3.2.0.Beta1.
I hope this will help to someone to save time.
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