Rossen Stoyanchev opened SPR-11357 and commented
For single servlet deployments, Spring configuration does not have to be split into "root" context configuration and "DispatcherServlet" configuration. When consolidating all configuration, it should be possible to do so in the "root" context (e.g. for application that use Spring Security).
In web.xml it's possible to leave the contextConfigLocation attribute of the DispatcherServlet empty and load all Spring configuration in the root context.
The AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer however prevents createServletApplicationContext from returning null.
Affects: 3.2.6, 4.0 GA
Issue Links:
Referenced from: commits ab5f125, 341d645, 5307a87, 21eb8db, 9845d9e
Backported to: 3.2.7