I don't think we want any of this infecting servlet contexts they shouldn't be, but I don't have the V4 code in front of me to remember how this all changed.

Basically, whatever we need the paths to be, they need to be only those paths and never any others, so whatever it takes for that to happen.

Yeah, it seems controllers are not scanned for or registered in the root application context because there is no RequestMappingHandlerMapping defined - whereas it is in the dispatcher servlet context.

Some options:

1. Use only a postconfig.xml, but move the RequestMappingHandlerMapping to the root context e.g. inside global-system.xml. This works, but not sure of all the implications.

2. Use only a postconfig.xml, but add detectHandlerMethodsInAncestorContexts="true" to the RequestMappingHandlerMapping in the mvc-beans.xml. This will scan for controllers and mappings in the parent (root) context.

3. Add a new post-webflow-config.xml which is added to the configuration of the idp servlet (as tested above).

I quite like the second option, although it does mean you could register a controller in the root context and not specifically in the IdP servlet's context.

It must be a requirement of MVC for the configuration to be inside the servlet, I see they get processed by the Spring dispatcher servlet.

I think it's pretty likely that we just have to add a second convention there, it's just unfortunate that it will mean editing web.xml to do it for deployers.

It creates the bean if specified in the (existing) postconfig hook, but is not routing to it as a controller. First though is the annotation processing - but not sure.  I will investigate.

You're right, that's true, so it would need to be a postconfig file. My question is why the existing hook for that in web.xml won't work, but I think this relates to my never understanding the reason the files had to be split like that.

I thought it was one global context, but I suppose that must not be really true, in which case I guess we should have created a pre/post hook convention for the IdP servlet also?