Native Image - Spring Boot - AWS Serverless Java Container - startup error - missing ServletWebServerFactory bean

Question

I am trying to create a native image for my Spring Boot application that also uses the AWS serverless Java container.

The Spring Boot app is a simple petstore application.

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jdbc</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        <exclusions>
            
            <!-- Comment for local -->
            <exclusion>
              <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
              <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
            <!-- Not using yaml -->
            <exclusion>
              <groupId>org.yaml</groupId>
              <artifactId>snakeyaml</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context-indexer</artifactId>
        <optional>true</optional>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.amazonaws.serverless</groupId>
        <artifactId>aws-serverless-java-container-springboot2</artifactId>
        <version>1.8</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>mysql</groupId>
        <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
        <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <!-- <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin> -->
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <createDependencyReducedPom>false</createDependencyReducedPom>
                <!-- <filters>
                    <filter>
                        <artifact>*:*</artifact>
                        <excludes>
                            <exclude>**/Log4j2Plugins.dat</exclude>
                        </excludes>
                    </filter>
                </filters> -->
            </configuration>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>shade</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <artifactSet>
                            <excludes>
                                <exclude>org.apache.tomcat.embed:*.jar</exclude>
                            </excludes>
                        </artifactSet>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
    
</build>

Entry point

public class StreamLambdaHandler implements RequestStreamHandler {
private static SpringBootLambdaContainerHandler<HttpApiV2ProxyRequest, AwsProxyResponse> handler;
private static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(StreamLambdaHandler.class);

public static void main(String[] args) {
    
}

static {
    try {
        logger.info("StreamLambdaHandler static init start");
        //handler = SpringBootLambdaContainerHandler.getHttpApiV2ProxyHandler(SamplebootApplication.class);
        
          handler = new SpringBootProxyHandlerBuilder<HttpApiV2ProxyRequest>()
          .defaultHttpApiV2Proxy() .asyncInit()
          .springBootApplication(SamplebootApplication.class) .buildAndInitialize();
          
          logger.info("StreamLambdaHandler init -async init call ");
         
        logger.info("StreamLambdaHandler init call invoked");

    } catch (ContainerInitializationException e) {
        // if we fail here. We re-throw the exception to force another cold start
        e.printStackTrace();
        throw new RuntimeException("Could not initialize Spring Boot application", e);
    }
}

@Override
public void handleRequest(InputStream inputStream, OutputStream outputStream, Context context) throws IOException {
    Instant start = Instant.now();
    logger.info("StreamLambdaHandler handler method begin");
    handler.proxyStream(inputStream, outputStream, context);
    logger.info(
            "StreamLambdaHandler handler method end in millisecs:" + start.until(Instant.now(), ChronoUnit.MILLIS));

}

The application works when deployed on AWS lambda. I am now trying to optimise the cold start time by converting to Native Image.

Added spring native

<dependency>
        <!-- This is a mandatory dependency for your application -->
        <groupId>org.springframework.experimental</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-native</artifactId>
        <version>0.11.4</version>
    </dependency>

Removed shade plugin, added AOT plugin

<plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.experimental</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-aot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>0.11.4</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>generate</id>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>generate</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
                <!-- <execution> <id>test-generate</id> <goals> <goal>test-generate</goal> 
                    </goals> </execution> -->
            </executions>
        </plugin>

The executable jar - works fine in local.

Edit: The jar fails with the same error as below when run with springAot=true.

The jar is now converted to Native Image using below steps.

rm -rf native
mkdir -p native
cd native
jar -xvf ../samplebootv2-native-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar >/dev/null 2>&1
cp -R META-INF BOOT-INF/classes
native-image -H:Name=samplebootv2-native-app -cp BOOT-INF/classes:`find BOOT-INF/lib | tr '\n' ':'`

Image is build without errors. However, when the native image is excecuted it fails with following error.

    org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextException: Unable to start web server; nested exception is org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextException: Unable to start ServletWebServerApplicationContext due to missing ServletWebServerFactory bean.
        at org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.ServletWebServerApplicationContext.onRefresh(ServletWebServerApplicationContext.java:163) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:577) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:5.3.18]
        at org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.ServletWebServerApplicationContext.refresh(ServletWebServerApplicationContext.java:145) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refresh(SpringApplication.java:740) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refreshContext(SpringApplication.java:415) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:303) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.boot.builder.SpringApplicationBuilder.run(SpringApplicationBuilder.java:164) ~[na:na]
        at com.amazonaws.serverless.proxy.spring.SpringBootLambdaContainerHandler.initialize(SpringBootLambdaContainerHandler.java:195) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:na]
        at com.amazonaws.serverless.proxy.AsyncInitializationWrapper$AsyncInitializer.run(AsyncInitializationWrapper.java:120) ~[na:na]
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:829) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:na]
        at com.oracle.svm.core.thread.PlatformThreads.threadStartRoutine(PlatformThreads.java:704) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:na]
        at com.oracle.svm.core.posix.thread.PosixPlatformThreads.pthreadStartRoutine(PosixPlatformThreads.java:202) ~[na:na]
    Caused by: org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextException: Unable to start ServletWebServerApplicationContext due to missing ServletWebServerFactory bean.
        at org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.ServletWebServerApplicationContext.getWebServerFactory(ServletWebServerApplicationContext.java:210) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.ServletWebServerApplicationContext.createWebServer(ServletWebServerApplicationContext.java:180) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        at org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.context.ServletWebServerApplicationContext.onRefresh(ServletWebServerApplicationContext.java:160) ~[samplebootv2-native-app:2.6.6]
        ... 11 common frames omitted    

I checked the generated image using graal vm visualiser and found that the classes from the aws-serverless-java-container-springboot2-1.8.jar were missing in the image

So I added the class files (only few of them) in

META-INF\native-image\org.springframework.aot\spring-aot\reflect-config.json

Also tried(with both init modes)

@InitializationHint(types =com.amazonaws.serverless.proxy.spring.embedded.ServerlessServletEmbeddedServerFactory.class, initTime = InitializationTime.RUN)

However, the same error repeats. The classes are missing in the generated image.

Could anyone provide some insights into what could be going wrong here?