How to clear "not found" value from bean caches in DefaultListableBeanFacory

[george_007]

During upgrade from spring 3.1.1 to spring 3.2 I've come to the following question:

How can I clear "not found" value (empty array) from bean caches - singleton/nonsingleton bean names keyed by bean class - in DefaultListableBeanFacory (i.e. singletonBeanNameByType, singletonBeanNameByType)?

Scenario:

Application consists of
- several application modules, each one has it's on applicationContext with beanFacory
- shared parent application context
- modules are initialized in specified order

Now if I want to use bean from module A in module B (e.g. for autowiring) I have to publish it to shared parent application context:
parentBeanFactory.registerSingleton("moduleName" + "." + beanName, bean);


That was working in spring 3.1.1. However in spring 3.2.1 beans are cached.

During autowiring in module A:
- bean cache in DefaultListableBeanFacory is initialized with entry [Bean.class, {"beanName"}]
- bean caches in all parent bean factories are initialized with entry [Bean.class, {}]

Now If I publish the bean to the shared parent application context to be accessible from other modules:

parentBeanFactory.registerSingleton("moduleName" + "." + beanName, bean);

Autowiring by @Autowired of this bean in module B fails because it has bean already cached in parent bean facory as [Bean.class, {}].

How to clear this entry in parent beanFactory?

I was able to get it working with the following workaround.

Publishing beans to parent module:

// get beanDefinition in module A
ConfigurableListableBeanFactory beanFactory = (ConfigurableListableBeanFactory) applicationContext.getBeanFactory();
BeanDefinition beanDefinition = beanFactory.getBeanDefinition(name);

// use it for clearing caches in parent DefaultListableBeanFacory
DefaultListableBeanFactory parentBeanFactory = (DefaultListableBeanFactory) parentContext.getBeanFactory();
parentBeanFactory.registerBeanDefinition(name, beanDefinition);
parentBeanFactory.removeBeanDefinition(name);


// now really publish bean to parent context
String publishedName = module.getIdentifier().getId() + "." + name;
parentBeanFactory.registerSingleton(publishedName, bean);

Autowiring of bean in module B now works.

What is the correct way to do it? Or is it bug/oversight in spring?