[Springframework-developer] Possible bug in Spring

[Andy D. <an...@ma...>]

I may have discovered a bug in Spring, but I want to make sure it is not 
already known (and that it is really a bug).
Say you have these beans defined:

----
<bean id="a" class="mypackage.A">
  <property name="b"><ref bean="b"/></property>
</bean>

<bean id="b" class="mypackage.B">
  <constructor-arg index="0"><ref bean="a"/></constructor-arg>
</bean>

<bean id="c" class="mypackage.C">
  <property name="b"><ref bean="b"/></property>
</bean>
----

If you write the code below, you get "different instances":

A a = (A)ac.getBean("a");
C c = (C)ac.getBean("c");

if(a.getB() != c.getB()) {
  System.out.println("different instances");
}

---
Basically, bean "b" is instantiated twice, even though it is a singleton.  At 
the very least, I would want to have an exception thrown rather than Spring 
silently creating two instances of "b".  I should note that this is against a 
version of spring that was obtained from cvs about 3 weeks ago.  I currently 
do not have time to test against a newer Spring, but thought I'd put this out 
there anyway so that if it is known, then I won't spend any more time on the 
problem.

Thanks,
  Andy