I see strange errors in my Dataflow job that may be related to library versioning

Question

Errors range from 404s, IOExceptions, or encoding exceptions. They can be buried in the error stack, and occasionally suggest a versioning problem.

How can I prevent or address this class of errors?

Answer 1

The Dataflow service's SDKs and worker take dependencies on common third-party components, which themselves import various dependencies. Version collisions can result in unexpected behavior in the service. If you are using any of these packages in your code, be aware that some libraries are not forward-compatible and you may need to pin to the listed versions that will be in scope during execution. In order to determine whether your JAR has a conflicting version in use, consider inspecting the dependency tree of your project. Consult the list of specifically pinned versions if you suspect a problem here, and also avoid using "latest" for any of these libraries.