Groovy 4 Breaking Change for Grab Annotations
There has been a breaking change in Groovy 4 for users using @Grab
to import certain libraries. This page describes the error that occurs, the symptoms, and the solutions you can implement.
Summary of the problem
We have noticed that some users encounter the error below after upgrading to Scriptrunner version 8.0.0 or newer. This error is caused by using the @Grab
annotation to import libraries into a script where that library has transitive dependencies that are not compatible with Groovy 4. All ScriptRunner versions from 8.0.0 onwards use Groovy 4. If a library imported with @Grab
has transitive dependencies incompatible with Groovy 4, it will cause script compilation to break.
This is not a ScriptRunner-specific bug. It impacts anyone using Groovy 4 on any platform.
Error
No such property: importPackages for class: org.codehaus.groovy.ast.ModuleNode
Symptoms
If you have triggered a script that contains a @Grab
call that pulls in a problematic library, it will cause all features in ScriptRunner that use user-created scripts to stop working and produce the above error. This is because once the script has been triggered the incompatible library is added to the classpath, which all ScriptRunner features use.
Solution
There are three main solution paths you can take and these are described below.
For any solution path, if you make changes that remove or update the @Grab
annotation, you must run the Clear the Groovy class loader cache built-in script. If you do not do this, the broken library will still be on the classpath, and any changes you make will not stop the error from occurring when triggering ScriptRunner scripts/features.
Solution 1: Update the @Grab
call not to import transitive dependencies
An example @Grab
call that can cause this error on Groovy 4 is shown below:
@Grab('com.github.groovy-wslite:groovy-wslite:1.1.2')
To prevent the @Grab
call from pulling in transitive dependencies, you would amend the above to:
@Grab('com.github.groovy-wslite:groovy-wslite:1.1.2;transitive=false')
This will not take effect until you run the Clear the Groovy class loader cache built-in script, which removes the broken dependencies from the class loader.
Solution 2: Update the version of the library you are importing with @Grab
to a version that is compatible with Groovy 4
The quickest way to determine if the @Grab
imported library works in Groovy 4 is to try it on Groovy 4. If you have Groovy installed locally on your machine, you can use the groovyconsole as described in the Apache Groovy documentation.
Make sure your local install of Groovy is set to use a Groovy 4 SDK
If you have a test server running ScriptRunner 8.0.0 or newer, you can try it in the Script console, but remember, if you trigger the error, you must clear the class loader cache again to fix it. Do not do this in production because it will stop all ScriptRunner features from working.
Solution 3: Use a library that is already part of ScriptRunner to do what your @Grab
library is doing
This solution involves removing @Grab
calls and using existing libraries provided with ScriptRunner.
@Grab
makes external calls to download libraries. If a library is already available on the classpath, you can avoid these external calls and use a standard import statement instead.
Several users import libraries with @Grab
that allow them to make REST calls. ScriptRunner includes the org.codehaus.groovy.modules.http-builder
library, which is documented here. This library can most likely do whatever you need to do concerning making external REST calls. This library has classes like groovyx.net
.http.HTTPBuilder
and groovyx.net
.http.RESTClient
. Both classes can be accessed with a simple import, with no @Grab
calls required.
For example, if you want to make a GET REST call with a REST client, you can do this:
groovyimport groovyx.net.http.RESTClient def client = new RESTClient('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com') def resp = client.get( path: '/todos/1' ) resp['data']