WebServiceContext (sometimes) not injected with OSGi - Apache Karaf - osgi

Question

My team inherited an old codebase built on top of Apache Karaf, and it has some JAX-WS services. We're currently having a problem with this object not always being injected to the Bean.
Our service is defined as:
#WebService(serviceName = "XXXSoapService", portName = "XXXSoapPort", endpointInterface = "com.XXX.service.XXXSoapInterface", targetNamespace = "http://xxx.xx/")
#BindingType(value=SOAPBinding.SOAP12HTTP_BINDING)
public class XXXSoapService implements XXXSoapInterface {
#Resource
WebServiceContext context;
public void doXXX() {
context.getMessageContext(); // throws nullpointerexception
}
}
We have already tried several options we found online. We tried setter injection, we tried to specify a name for the Resource, and we made sure the endpointInterface was set.
However, no matter what we do, most of the times, the service is instantiated without injecting the WebServiceContext. Some times, it works, which leads us to believe it may have to do with how KARAF works, and it tries to inject the WebServiceContext before it's available.
We have CXF in the org.apache.karaf.features.xml, in a featuresBoot section.
My understanding of OSGI and Karaf is very basic, so I don't really know what to look for.
Does anybody have any idea of why the WebServiceContext is not injected most of the time, but it is injected some times?
EDIT: I've been reading about it, and it seems an exception I'm having with Apache Blueprint might have something to do with it:
[Blueprint Extender: 3] ERROR org.apache.aries.blueprint.container.BlueprintContainerImpl - Unable
to start blueprint container for bundle
io.hawt.hawtio-karaf-terminal/2.0.0 due to unresolved dependencies
[(objectClass=org.apache.felix.service.threadio.ThreadIO),
(objectClass=org.apache.felix.service.command.CommandProcessor)]
java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException
at org.apache.aries.blueprint.container.BlueprintContainerImpl$1.run(BlueprintContainerImpl.java:371)
at org.apache.aries.blueprint.utils.threading.impl.DiscardableRunnable.run(DiscardableRunnable.java:48)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.access$201(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:180)
at java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:293)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
I'll look into the dependencies for this module, but can this be the reason? Any other ideas?

Answer 1

Found a fix, however, I doubt it is the solution. It's more of a work around.
I've added javaee-api-7.0.jar to a folder of dependencies we always load when Karaf is starting, and it suddenly started working every time. It now injects the WebServiceContext as expected.
What it doesn't explain is why it worked some times before. If it was a missing dependency, it would never work. My guess is that some dependencies were loaded too late, and it would fail most of the times, and now because I'm including it in this folder of dependencies, it's loaded at startup or early enough in the process. I honestly don't understand what's happening.
I'm posting this answer because it might help somebody else, but I won't mark it as solved, because I don't believe it is the actual fix. If anyone has a proper solution, please fire away.