title: Why does spring throw an aspectj error if it does not depend on aspectj?
body: <p>I'm attempting to setup the Spring AoP framework and I don't want to depend on AspectJ, so I'm declaring my aspects, advice etc in a bean xml configuration file similar to the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;bean id="systemAuthorizationsAspect" class="com.cp.pm.systemsettings.SystemAuthorizationsAspect" &gt;
      &lt;property name="sysAuthorizations" ref="authorizations" /&gt;
  &lt;/bean&gt;
  &lt;bean id="authorizations" class="com.hp.cp.pm.systemsettings.SystemAuthorizationsImpl"&gt;
      &lt;property name="authSettingsRegistry" ref="systemSettingsRegistry" /&gt;
  &lt;/bean&gt;
  &lt;aop:config&gt;
      &lt;aop:aspect id="createPlanAspect" ref="systemAuthorizationsAspect"&gt;
           &lt;aop:before pointcut="execution(* com.hp.cp.web.api.plan.PlanApi.createPlan(..))" method="authorizePlanCreation"/&gt;
      &lt;/aop:aspect&gt;
  &lt;/aop:config&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I recieve the following error whenever I specify a pointcut as seen above:</p>
  
  <pre><code>BeanPostProcessor before instantiation of bean failed; 
  nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: 
  Error creating bean with name 'org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJPointcutAdvisor#0': 
  Cannot create inner bean '(inner bean)' of type [org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJMethodBeforeAdvice] while setting constructor argument; 
  nested exception is org.springframework.beans.
  factory.BeanCreationException: 
  Error creating bean with name '(inner bean)': 
  Cannot create inner bean '(inner bean)' of type [org.springframework.aop.aspectj.AspectJExpressionPointcut] while setting constructor argument; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: 
  Error creating bean with name '(inner bean)': 
  Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is **java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/aspectj/weaver/reflect/ReflectionWorld$ReflectionWorldException**
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I can make this work when I include the aspectjweaver.jar. Yet this should not have to be the case. Any thoughts?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance</p>