Dealing with JAR dependency conflictsedit

If you want to use Elasticsearch in your Java application, you may have to deal with version conflicts with third party dependencies like Guava and Joda. For instance, perhaps Elasticsearch uses Joda 2.8, while your code uses Joda 2.1.

You have two choices:

  • The simplest solution is to upgrade. Newer module versions are likely to have fixed old bugs. The further behind you fall, the harder it will be to upgrade later. Of course, it is possible that you are using a third party dependency that in turn depends on an outdated version of a package, which prevents you from upgrading.
  • The second option is to relocate the troublesome dependencies and to shade them either with your own application or with Elasticsearch and any plugins needed by the Elasticsearch client.

The "To shade or not to shade" blog post describes all the steps for doing so.