AspectJ pointcut not working with external classes and LTW

I am trying to use AspectJ (which until yesterday I didn’t know) with LTW in order to understand how an existing framework works. In brief, I am interested at how framework's input XML files get parsed.

I have written the following aspect:

import org.aspectj.lang.JoinPoint;
import org.aspectj.lang.reflect.CodeSignature;

public aspect UnitContextTrace {

    static final void println(String s){ System.out.println(s); }

    pointcut unitContextMethodsExec(): call(public * org.ivalidator.framework.test.UnitContext.* (..)) ||
    call(public void org.ivalidator.repository..*.set* (..));

    Object around(): unitContextMethodsExec() {
        println("Intercepted message: " +
                thisJoinPointStaticPart.getSignature().getName());
        println("in class: " +
                thisJoinPointStaticPart.getSignature().getDeclaringType().getName());
        printParameters(thisJoinPoint);
        println("Running original method: \n" );
        Object result = proceed();
        println("  result: " + result );
        return result;
    }

    static private void printParameters(JoinPoint jp) {
        println("Arguments: " );
        Object[] args = jp.getArgs();
        String[] names = ((CodeSignature)jp.getSignature()).getParameterNames();
        Class[] types = ((CodeSignature)jp.getSignature()).getParameterTypes();
        for (int i = 0; i < args.length; i++) {
            println("  "  + i + ". " + names[i] +
                    " : " +            types[i].getName() +
                    " = " +            args[i]);
        }
    }
}

This should debug both calls to methods of UnitContext interface’s implementations and those to setXXX() methods of any class belonging to org.ivalidator.repository.* package.

I packaged my Aspect in its own jar using

 ajc UnitContextTrace.aj -outxml -outjar aspectTrace.jar -extdirs "C:\aspectj1.6\lib\"

and I started the program (I use an ant script) passing -javaagent:${aspectj.home}/lib/aspectjweaver.jar to the JVM.

The first part of the aspect (UnitContext methods) works and I can see for example

Intercepted message: getAdapter…

But unfortunately there are no logs for calls to setXXX() methods. The package org.ivalidator.repository.* is part of ivalidator.jar, which of course uses 3rd parties libraries stored in a lib folder. The structure is something like this:

• Ivalidator.jar
• /lib
  • Castor-0.9.7.jar
  • xercesImpl.jar

Using the debugger, I noticed that setXXX() methods are invoked from external classes (belonging to castor-0.9.7.jar, which in turn are invoked by xerces’ classes). To be more precise, the stack trace I can see in the debugger is this:

**ParameterXml.setName(String) line: 60 (I want to intercept this)**
NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Method, Object, Object[]) line: not available [native method]  
NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Object, Object[]) line: not available   
DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Object, Object[]) line: not available   
Method.invoke(Object, Object...) line: not available    
FieldHandlerImpl.setValue(Object, Object) line: 501 
UnmarshalHandler.processAttribute(String, String, String, XMLFieldDescriptor, XMLClassDescriptor, Object) line: 3028    
UnmarshalHandler.processAttributes(AttributeSet, XMLClassDescriptor) line: 2702 
UnmarshalHandler.startElement(String, String, AttributeSet) line: 2325  
UnmarshalHandler.startElement(String, String, String, Attributes) line: 1388    
SAXParser(AbstractSAXParser).startElement(QName, XMLAttributes, Augmentations) line: not available  
SAXParser(AbstractXMLDocumentParser).emptyElement(QName, XMLAttributes, Augmentations) line: not available  
XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanStartElement() line: not available 
XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl$NSContentDispatcher(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDis开发者_开发技巧patcher).dispatch(boolean) line: not available    
XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl(XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl).scanDocument(boolean) line: not available  
XML11Configuration.parse(boolean) line: not available   
XML11Configuration.parse(XMLInputSource) line: not available    
SAXParser(XMLParser).parse(XMLInputSource) line: not available  
SAXParser(AbstractSAXParser).parse(InputSource) line: not available 
**DescriptorRepositoryXml(XmlObject).fromXml(InputSource) line: 341 (last call within ivalidator.jar)** 

I wonder whether calls to external classes (external jars but also i.e. org.xml.sax.xmlreader) may cause the problem?

I guess you do not want to intercept call(), but execution(). In that case it does not matter whether your third party classes are woven or not.