IRI resolution against a same-scheme base rewrites absolute info: IRIs (info:a/b -> info:a/a/b) since jena-iri removal

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Since Nov 6, 2026.

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Description

Version

6.2.0

What happened?

When the base IRI and the reference share a scheme and the scheme uses a rootless path with no authority (e.g. info:), an absolute reference is resolved as if it were relative:

var m = ModelFactory.createDefaultModel();
m.read(new ByteArrayInputStream(
    "<info:fedora/resource1> <http://x/p> <info:fedora/resource2> .".getBytes()),
    "info:fedora/resource1", "TURTLE");
m.write(System.out, "N-TRIPLES");

Jena 5.5.0 (default provider IRIProviderJenaIRI):

<info:fedora/resource1> <http://x/p> <info:fedora/resource2> .

Jena 6.2.0 (default provider IRIProvider3986):

<info:fedora/fedora/resource1> <http://x/p> <info:fedora/fedora/resource2> .

The same happens with UpdateFactory.create(sparql, base).

The cause is in IRI3986.resolve, which already behaves this way in 5.5.0:

IRI3986.create("info:fedora/resource1").resolve(IRI3986.create("info:fedora/resource2"))
// -> info:fedora/fedora/resource2

This matches the non-strict branch of RFC 3986 §5.2.2 (if (!strict) and R.scheme == Base.scheme then undefine R.scheme). RFC 3986 calls this a loophole from earlier specifications whose use "should be avoided" and keeps it only for backward compatibility. A reference with a scheme is expected to be returned unchanged, apart from dot-segment removal.

In 5.x this did not matter because IRIProviderJenaIRI was the default. 6.x removes jena-iri, so IRIProvider3986 is the only provider and there is no way to get strict resolution.

Impact: Fedora Commons (fcrepo) parses internal RDF and SPARQL Update with an info:fedora/... base. With 6.x, every absolute info:fedora/... IRI is rewritten to info:fedora/fedora/..., which corrupts stored triples. Found while evaluating the upgrade in https://github.com/fcrepo/fcrepo/pull/2338.

Expected: an absolute reference whose scheme equals the base's scheme resolves to itself (strict RFC 3986 resolution), or strict mode can at least be configured.

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