HDFS processors no longer accept variable for additional classpath, can I use autoload dir?

[Isha Lamboo <is...@virtualsciences.nl>]

Hi all,

I’m preparing to upgrade some NiFi clusters from 1.12 to 1.18 (after making a pit stop at 1.16 for sensitive dynamic properties conversion).

After upgrading a test server, all HDFS processors show as invalid with an error that the path ‘${ADDITIONAL_CLASSPATH}’ could not be found for the additional classpath property.
It appears that the processors no longer support a variable or parameter for this setting. I assume this is because of the improvements in how the processors are loaded.

Due to the number of processors involved, it seems I will need to do a search/replace through the flow.json.gz to update these. I’m hesitant to hardcode the value in case future changes are needed.

My question is: Can I safely add the Azure libraries currently located in the additional classpath to either an additional nifi libs dir specified in nifi.properties or the autoload directory?
Would they be available to the HDFS processors and not cause any performance problems? That would hopefully allow me to empty the additional classpath property and still be able to make changes in one place later.

Kind regards,

Isha