Autowired annontation completely ignored

[kimbaltrue]

I have a very simple bean that's annotated with @Service and has an @Autowired property. I'm using context:component-scan in the configuration file which works fine to load the service bean. However, nothing I do seems to get the container to recognize the @Autowired annotation on the property. In fact if I state @Autowired(required=true) the bean still loads with no error, but the property is injected.

The relevant lines in the configuration are:
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:sec="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schem...-beans-2.5.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schem...ontext-2.5.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-2.0.4.xsd"
>
...
<context:annotation-config/>
<bean id="domainA" class="org.ccf.roswell.access.AccessControlDomainS ervice"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="org.ccf.roswell" />
...

The relevant lines in code are:

@Service("Repository")
public class RepositoryService implements org.ccf.roswell.repository.Repository
{
@Autowired(required=true)
private AccessControlDomain accessControlDomain=null;
...

There is a setter and getter for the property, but the documentation indicates that I can set the @Autowired on the field itself. When I do place the Autowired statement on the setter it makes no difference. All the beans load, but it's like the container completely ignores the Autowired annotation.

I was running this under 3.0.0M1, but switched to 2.5.6 to see if that made a difference. I'm not up to the point that I need the features of 3.0.0M1 yet. I've included all the dependent Jar files I can identify. Is there something that I'm missing to trigger Autowiring?

[kimbaltrue]

When I removed the following tag, (which was loading the "Repository" bean,) and added the next tag, the bean loaded and autowired, but I can't determine at this time if it's using the annotations or simply filling in the empty properties.

*doesn't work - for autowired*
<context:component-scan base-package="org.ccf.roswell" />

*does autowired*
<bean id="Repository" class="org.ccf.roswell.repository.RepositoryServic e" autowire="byType"/>

This means that I can continue with my development, but I'm concerned I'm missing something in the configuration or maybe the dependencies.

Further update --- I tried placing @PostContruct on an init method - The annotation was ignored. Obviously I'm missing something that triggers annotation processing. Can anybody please give me a hint?

[kimbaltrue]

Okay, I switched to an ApplicationContext and called refresh. It's not clear in the documentation that the BeanPostProcessors etc... are not called with straight BeanFactories. However, I had to fall back to 2.5 because 3.0M1 doesn't work unless you have the magic copy of Antlr.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, is there a way to get the BeanPostProcessors to run with a BeanFactory or do you always need an ApplicationContext?

[dejanp]

Okay, I switched to an ApplicationContext and called refresh. It's not clear in the documentation that the BeanPostProcessors etc... are not called with straight BeanFactories. However, I had to fall back to 2.5 because 3.0M1 doesn't work unless you have the magic copy of Antlr.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, is there a way to get the BeanPostProcessors to run with a BeanFactory or do you always need an ApplicationContext?

Reference docs:

3.8.1. BeanFactory or ApplicationContext?
Short version: use an ApplicationContext unless you have a really good reason for not doing so. For those of
you that are looking for slightly more depth as to the 'but why' of the above recommendation, keep reading.