Consider adding dependency convergence detection

[sjohnr]

We should consider adding dependency convergence detection to our build to prevent issues like gh-13843. For example, the following dependencies must agree on the version of com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt.

• spring-security-oauth2-client -> com.nimbusds:oauth2-oidc-sdk -> com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt
• spring-security-oauth2-jose -> com.nimbusds:nimbus-jose-jwt

See comment and related issue for more information.

[marcusdacoregio]

@sjohnr if there aren't more dependencies that have to be checked, this might have been resolved via #14047. I'll close this but we can reopen if needed.

[sjohnr]

@marcusdacoregio based on this comment, I think the idea was to add general purpose detection when convergence issues arise. But I don't have too much experience with that. gh-14047 definitely solves the most immediate problem, so I'll let others weigh in on whether more general detection is still needed. @ThomasKasene

[ThomasKasene]

I'll weigh in my own experience - make of it what you will 😄

My team maintains a large number of Spring Boot applications which all use Spring Security for OAuth 2.0 stuff. When Boot 3.1.1 (I think) was released, Dependabot gave us a bunch of PRs to upgrade, but all the builds broke because we use the maven-enforcer-plugin to detect dependency convergence errors. The culprit was, of course, the fact that spring-security-oauth2-jose and oauth2-oidc-sdk depended on different versions of nimbus-jose-jwt.

We could have overridden the versions of the offending dependency in all the apps, and that would've been the "correct" thing to do. Doing so would've meant having to look out for changes/fixes in Spring Security to this issue (like the one provided through #13843). In the meantime, we'd have to manage any Dependabot PRs about nimbus-jose-jwt in all the apps, which would possibly all be invalid anyway because both Spring Security and oauth2-oidc-sdk use very old versions of nimbus-jose-jwt.

In the end, a general lack of bandwidth forced us to jump to plan B, which was simply to not upgrade to Spring Boot 3.1.1 at all. The fix didn't arrive until 3.1.5, so our adoption rate crashed down to zero in the meantime.

So yeah, a dependency convergence error on this exact artifact has happened before, and perhaps the Nimbus stuff is particularly prone to it because their release cycles are so out of sync. But the idea was to get something in place to prevent these kinds of issues from happening at all in the future. 😃

[marcusdacoregio]

Thanks, @ThomasKasene. I'll keep this open and label it as ideal for contribution because I think it can be worth adding that to prevent such problems. It would be great if someone could investigate what would be needed to apply the plugin that you mentioned.

[andreilisa]

Hello @marcusdacoregio, can I take this one ?

[marcusdacoregio]

Hello, @andreilisa. Yes, the issue is yours.

I'd start by adding the plugin to the build and check what dependencies should be aligned to have a successful compilation.
Additionally, we might even be able to remove this if the plugin can detect such a setup.

[andreilisa]

Yes got it, I will ask here if I have additional questions.