Much like providing a list of properties files in priority for PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, it would be nice to be able to do the same for EhCacheManagerFactoryBean. This would allow a default EhCache configuration to be inside your Jar/War on the classpath, and if need be, you can override that configuration by providing another location to load from.

Example XML:

<bean id="cacheManager"
class="org.springframework.cache.ehcache.EhCacheManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="configLocations">
<list>
<value>classpath*:ehcache.override.xml</value>
<value>classpath*:META-INF/ehcache.default.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>

Example code that should be added to EhCacheManagerFactoryBean (or in a subclass of it):

/**

• Based on an array of configuration location {@link Resource}s listed in
  * order of decending priority, this will use the first available
  * {@link Resource} to configure the EhCache CacheManager.
• @return the config location {@link Resource} to use
  */
  public void setConfigLocations(final Resource[] configLocations) {

if (configLocations == null || configLocations.length < 0) { logger.info("No valid configLocations were set."); return; }

// uses the first available config location
super.setConfigLocation(configLocations[0]);
}