Why listeners are global listeners?

[yura-arab4uk]

In my project I wanted to add a listener and use along with @retryable annotation.
But when I add a listener it's automatically considered by Spring Retry as global one, meaning it will be applied at least to every method marked with @retryable annotation, which prevents me from creating listener, because I don't want to impact existing code.

I prefer having explicit and clean way with @retryable annotation and its attributes, but because of global listener I'm forced to use interceptor attribute only and move all retry logic behide the scenes, which is not convenient.

Is that done for a reason? Can we provide some local listener or just onError attribute or any other alternative attribute which will only apply to a specific @retryable method and will allow us to perform some side effects in case exception is thrown?

[artembilan]

See if this attribute on the @Retryable annotation helps somehow:

	/**
	 * Bean names of retry listeners to use instead of default ones defined in Spring
	 * context. If this attribute is set to an empty string {@code ""}, it will
	 * effectively exclude all retry listeners, including with the default listener beans,
	 * from being used.
	 * @return retry listeners bean names
	 */
	String[] listeners() default {};

[yura-arab4uk]

right, that's the one I was trying to use, but the problem is that it requires a bean of RetryListener, which I don't want to provide, because such beans will be automatically applied to every method, marked with @retryable annotation, I don't want to impact an existing code and I've seen people on the Internet wishing these listeners were not global as I do, otherwise it kind of looses its sence because it impacts everything.
And I'm aware about listeners = "", which does not solve this problem. Would be great if we had a solution like the one I suggested above or provide both GlobalRetryListener and just RetryListener, we could think of any alternative, this will alow us to use explicit @retryable annotation with its attributes without having to hide all of them behide the schenes and create that inteceptor in config.

[yura-arab4uk]

@artembilan what do you think?

[artembilan]

I think what you suggest makes sense, but that is not what we can do in the currently in maintenance 2.0.x version.
We will think about something when we start a new major version.
Meanwhile we have to live with whatever is there without breaking compatibility.
Thanks for understanding!

[yura-arab4uk]

thank you very much, I will create an issue then as a placeholder

[yura-arab4uk]

#485 (comment)