Alfresco Content Services

Extension Inspector

Alfresco Extension Inspector allows you to analyze Alfresco extensions and to compare them against a particular Content Services version. For example, it helps you to understand how customizations and extensions are affected with a newer version of Content Services, checking for compliance with our best practices and providing recommendations for upgrade impact and safety.

It works with Content Services 5.2 or later Enterprise Editions. The tool also works with other Content Services and Community Edition .war files, as long as you can generate an inventory report.

The Extension Inspector scans and validates an Alfresco extension (AMP or JAR) against an alfresco.war file.

The main features of the Extension Inspector are:

Parses Alfresco extensions, for example AMP or JAR files
Generates a report on possible overrides
Discourages the use of non-public APIs
Lists Alfresco’s third-party libraries

The Extension Inspector has two main modules:

Modules	Description
Inventory	`extension-inspector-inventory` for parsing an `alfresco.war` file
Analyser	`extension-inspector-analyser` for analyzing custom extensions against the inventory

Download

You can download the alfresco-extension-inspector-1.7.0.jar file from the Alfresco Nexus repository.

Note: See the Alfresco Extension Inspector GitHub repository for more details.

Run Inventory application

The application generates a report for a .war file.

Use the following command to run the application:


java -jar alfresco-extension-inspector-<version>.jar --inventory <alfresco_war_path> [--o=<report_file_path>]

where:

Option	Description
--inventory	Required. The path to a valid `.war` file that you want to parse.
--o	Optional. The output location where the report is generated. You can set this as either a file name or folder location. The report name defaults to `<war_name>.inventory.json`.
--help	Optional. Show help text.

When you run the Inventory command, the output is a report in JSON format with the following example structure:


{
  "schemaVersion" : "1.0",
  "alfrescoVersion" : "6.2.1",
  "resources" :
    {
      "ALFRESCO_PUBLIC_API" :
      [
        {
         "type" : "ALFRESCO_PUBLIC_API",
         "id" : "package.ClassName1",
         "deprecated" : false,
         "implicit" : false
        },
        {
        "type" : "ALFRESCO_PUBLIC_API",
        "id" : "package.ClassName2",
        "deprecated" : true,
        "implicit" : true
        },
        ...
      ],
      "CLASSPATH_ELEMENT" :
      [
        {
          "type" : "CLASSPATH_ELEMENT",
          "id" : "org/alfresco/package1/AClass.class",
          "definingObject" : "WEB-INF/lib/alfresco-library.jar"
        },
        {
          "type" : "CLASSPATH_ELEMENT",
          "id" : "com/3rdparty/packageA/AClass.class",
          "definingObject" : "WEB-INF/lib/3rdparty-library.jar"
        },
        ...
        ],
        "BEAN" :
        [
          {
           "type" : "BEAN",
           "id" : "beanName",
           "definingObject" : "alfresco/aContext.xml@WEB-INF/lib/alfresco-library.jar"
          },
         ...
        ],
        "FILE" :
        [
          {
            "type" : "FILE",
            "id" : "WEB-INF/classes/aFile.ext",
            "definingObject" : "WEB-INF/classes/aFile.ext"
          },
          {
            "type" : "FILE",
            "id" : "WEB-INF/lib/aLibrary.jar",
            "definingObject" : "WEB-INF/lib/aLibrary.jar"
          },
          ...
        ]
}

Run Analyser application

The application analyzes custom extensions against WAR inventories.

Use the following command to run the application:


java -jar alfresco-extension-inspector-<version>.jar <extension-filename> [--target-version=6.1.0[-7.4.0] | --target-inventory =/path/to/war_inventory.json] [--verbose=[true | false]]

where:

Option	Description
extension-filename	Required. AMP or JAR file containing an Alfresco extension.
--target-version	Optional. A specific Content Services version or range of versions. This option is mutually exclusive to `--target-inventory`.
--target-inventory	Optional. The file path to an existing WAR inventory. This option is mutually exclusive to `--target-version`.
--verbose	Optional. Show verbose output.
--list-known-alfresco-versions	Optional. List all Alfresco versions with inventory reports included in the tool.
--help	Optional. Show help text.

When running the command, alfresco-extension-inspector writes the conflicts directly to the console, grouped by type.

Example commands

Show help text:


   java -jar alfresco-extension-inspector.jar --help

List all Alfresco versions with bundled inventories:


   java -jar alfresco-extension-inspector.jar --list-known-alfresco-versions

The following conflict types are detected:

File overwrites (FILE_OVERWRITE)
Bean overwrites (BEAN_OVERWRITE)
Classpath conflicts (CLASSPATH_CONFLICT)
Beans instantiating restricted classes (BEAN_RESTRICTED_CLASS)
Usage of non @AlfrescoPublicAPI classes (ALFRESCO_INTERNAL_USAGE)
Usage of 3rd party libraries (WAR_LIBRARY_USAGE)

The output is a report with the following example structure.

Bean naming conflicts


The following Spring beans defined in the extension module are in conflict with
beans defined in the ACS repository:
    extension_bean

Spring beans are the basic building blocks of the ACS repository. Replacing these
will alter the behaviour of the system and can lead to unexpected behaviour.
Since all these beans are subject to change between Alfresco versions and even in
service packs, these modifications are typically bound to a specific Alfresco
version.
You should avoid redefining default beans of the ACS repository in your
extensions to reduce the cost of upgrades.
It is possible that these conflicts only exist in specific ACS versions. Run this
tool with the -verbose option to get a complete list of versions where each of
these files has conflicts.

Beans instantiating internal classes


The following Spring beans defined in the extension module instantiate internal
classes:
    extension_bean (class=org.alfresco.repo.... )

These classes are considered an internal implementation detail of the ACS
repository and do not constitute a supported extension point. They might change
or completely disappear between ACS versions and even in service packs.

Classpath conflicts


The following files and libraries in the extension module cause conflicts on the
Java classpath:
    /lib/alfresco-test.jar

Ambiguous resources on the Java classpath render the behaviour of the JVM
undefined (see Java specification).
Although it might be possible that the repository can still start-up, you can
expect erroneous behavior in certain situations. Problems of this kind are
typically very hard to detect and trace back to their root cause.
It is possible that these conflicts only exist in specific ACS versions. Run this
tool with the -verbose option to get a complete list of versions where each of
these files has conflicts.

Custom code using internal classes


The following classes defined in the extension module are using internal
repository classes:
    org.alfresco.repo...

Internal repository classes:
    org.alfresco.repo...

These classes are considered an internal implementation detail of the ACS
repository and might change or completely disappear between ACS versions and even
between service packs.
For a complete usage matrix, use the -verbose option of this tool.

Custom code using 3rd party libraries managed by the ACS repository


The code provided by the extension module is using these 3rd party libraries
brought by the ACS repository:
    /WEB-INF/lib/test-1.0.0.jar

These 3rd party libraries are managed by the ACS repository and are subject to
constant change, even in service packs and hotfixes.
Each of these libraries has its own backward compatibility strategy, which will
make it really hard for this extension to keep up with these changes.

REPORT SUMMARY
Across the provided target versions, the following number of conflicts have been
found:

| Type                    | Total |
| ----------------------- | ----- |
| BEAN_OVERWRITE          | 1     |
| BEAN_RESTRICTED_CLASS   | 1     |
| CLASSPATH_CONFLICT      | 1     |
| ALFRESCO_INTERNAL_USAGE | 2     |
| WAR_LIBRARY_USAGE       | 1     |

(use option --verbose for version details)

Alfresco extensions might hide conflicts of the following types if they contain Alfresco-specific libraries:

BEAN_RESTRICTED_CLASS
WAR_LIBRARY_USAGE
ALFRESCO_INTERNAL_USAGE

They are hidden because these types of conflict exclude from processing all the classes in the extension’s classpath. By including a class present in both extension and WAR in the processing, this may partially solve the issue because:

Two classes with the same canonical name could come from two different libraries, for example, an extension-specific library and an Alfresco library, or two different versions of the same Alfresco library. Therefore, checking the class name alone is not enough.
Comparing their libraries would help only when the same library with the same version is used in both the extension and the WAR. In case of different versions of the same library, the class won’t be recognized as an Alfresco internal class.

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