We are trying to upgrade to Java8. Unfortunately, our build is failing because we are using a bunch of instrumentation, which requires cglib/asm libs. The asm version that Hibernate 3.3.2 depends on is not compatible with Java8. For the moment we are trying to avoid upgrading Hibernate right away as this is going to open a separate can of worms.

BTW, we are doing some instrumentation at run time as well.

The question is if Hibernate 3 could work with the latest versions of cglib/asm 3.2.4/5.1?

I have tried it and I am getting an error:
An Ant BuildException has occured: java.lang.VerifyError: (class: org/hibernate/bytecode/cglib/CglibClassTransformer, method: doTransform signature: (Ljava/lang/ClassLoader;Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/Class;Ljava/security/ProtectionDomain;[B)[B) Incompatible object argument for function call

Thank you!

Hibernate 3.3.2 is a very old release that is no longer maintained so probably the latest cglib/asm versions might not work with it. Why do you use instrumentation in the first place?

Hibernate is being used to instrument lazy initialization of some resource objects that could be huge otherwise without need.
Also, we use hibernate tools to generate ddl from hbm.
Hibernate is using cglib/asm internally for run-time instrumentation too.

I am going to try to make Hibernate 3 work with the latest cglib if Hibernate upgrade won't go smoothly.

Since 3.3.0 Hibernate uses Javassist instead of CGlib. Lazy instrumentation is only required for basic properties. Otherwise you can use lazy associations with Proxies.

As for generating DDL from HBM< I don;t think that's ever a good idea. Ideally, you'd use a tool like FlywayDB to manage the schema automatically and have Hibernate map to that database schema.