Guide · updated
Cloud Manager failing on deprecated APIs? Fix it in this order
If your AEM as a Cloud Service pipeline now stops at Code Quality, the most likely reason is code that still uses one of the APIs Adobe deprecated and has now enforced. This guide gives the order of work that gets a pipeline green fastest, and keeps it green when the next group of APIs goes.
What Adobe changed, and when
| Date | What happens to code that uses the deprecated APIs |
|---|---|
| 26 Jan 2026 | Actions Center emails remind teams to remove the APIs. |
| 26 Feb 2026 | Pipelines pause at the Code Quality step; a Deployment Manager, Project Manager or Business Owner can override. |
| 14 Apr 2026 | Pipelines fail at the Code Quality step; deployments stay blocked until the usage is removed. |
| 28 Sep 2026 | Environments still using the APIs stop receiving critical Adobe release updates and lose standard performance and availability commitments. |
Adobe's deprecated-features page lists 26 February 2026 as the target removal date in its API table, while its summary note refers to removal on 28 September 2026. Either way, the enforcement steps above apply now. Check the page before you plan around a specific date.
The affected packages include Log4j 1 (org.apache.log4j), Logback, Jetty, Guava (com.google.common), Sling Commons Auth, the Felix Web Console, MongoDB, Abdera, Cocoon XML, com.drew metadata extraction and parts of SLF4J (org.slf4j.spi, org.slf4j.event).
Step 1: get the exact list, not a guess
- Open the failed execution in Cloud Manager and read the Code Quality results. Security and Reliability ratings fail a pipeline immediately; Maintainability and Coverage pause it.
- Build locally against the current aem-sdk-api version. Removed packages no longer resolve, so the compiler and the bundle analyser give you every file and every third-party bundle that still depends on them.
- Run the free readiness scan on a zip of your code modules for a grouped list with fixes; nothing is uploaded.
Step 2: fix the mechanical patterns first
Most hits are import swaps that do not change behaviour. Doing them first shrinks the list quickly and keeps the hard cases visible.
- Log4j 1 and Logback loggers to org.slf4j.Logger and LoggerFactory.
- org.apache.sling.commons.auth(.spi) to org.apache.sling.auth(.spi).
- Commons Lang 2 to Commons Lang 3 while you are in the same files: it is on Adobe's tentative list for 31 December 2027.
Step 3: rewrite the patterns that need judgement
- Guava: collections and preconditions move to the JDK; caches move to Caffeine. Watch iteration order: ImmutableMap keeps insertion order, Map.of does not.
- Jetty client code: use the JDK HttpClient or embed a current client library in your own bundle.
- Felix Web Console plugins: the org.apache.felix.webconsole API is on the removed list; move the function into a servlet or a Cloud Manager-friendly tool, or retire it.
Step 4: check third-party bundles
A pipeline can fail on a library you did not write. If a dependency imports a removed package, upgrade it to a version that does not, or embed what it needs. Do not rely on platform exports that Adobe has announced it will remove.
Step 5: fix the 2027 group in the same pass
Adobe lists a second group with a target removal date of 31 March 2027, including com.adobe.granite.xss and com.day.cq.xss, Commons FileUpload, Apache Tika, Handlebars, org.bson and com.day.cq.commons.predicate, and a tentative group for 31 December 2027 that includes Commons Lang 2, Commons Collections 3, org.json, org.apache.sling.runmode and Sling Commons JSON. Fixing them while the files are open costs far less than a second pipeline outage.
Step 6: keep it from coming back
- Fail your own build early: add the removed packages to a banned-imports rule so new code cannot reintroduce them.
- Re-check Adobe's deprecated-features page monthly; it changes often.
- Treat Actions Center emails as tickets, not newsletters.
Questions
Can we still override the Code Quality failure?
Not for these APIs since 14 April 2026: Adobe states that pipelines fail at the Code Quality step and deployments stay blocked until the usage is removed. Important issues such as Maintainability can still be overridden in a full-stack pipeline.
Is Felix SCR on the removed list?
Not on the 2026 list. Felix SCR annotations are build-time annotations that Adobe asks teams to replace with OSGi Declarative Services; they are part of most migrations but are not what fails Cloud Manager from April 2026.