Groovy ShortTypeHandling ClassNotFoundException - groovy

Question

I have a groovy application that uses groovy version 2.2.1. My groovy app was previously running fine but has recently started throwing this exception:
at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.call(AbstractCallSite.java:108)
at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.call(AbstractCallSite.java:116)
at com.app.Main.main(Main.groovy:83)Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.typehandling.ShortTypeHandling
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366)
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355)
The ShortTypeHandling class was not even introduced until groovy 2.3.0. How can it be referenced in a groovy app running version 2.2.1? I can solve this problem by replacing the groovy-all-2.2.1.jar with groovy-all-2.3.0.jar in my pom but that doesn't root cause the issue.

Answer 1

ShortTypeHandling was introduced in groovy-all-2.3.0.jar so the quick fix was to replace the older groovy-all-x.x.x.jar with groovy-all-2.3.0.jar. This solved the runtime ShorTypeHandling ClassNotFoundException but also created new problems by introducing a new groovy-all.jar dependency in the application.
The real issue was how the groovy compiler was being invoked via maven. Because I introduced spock which required groovy 2.0, I needed to update the maven entries for the groovy-eclipse-compiler dependency. Here are the updated maven entries for working with groovy 2.x:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1</version>
<configuration>
<compilerId>groovy-eclipse-compiler</compilerId>
<!-- Java version -->
<source>1.7</source>
<target>1.7</target>
</configuration>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactId>groovy-eclipse-compiler</artifactId>
<version>2.8.0-01</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactId>groovy-eclipse-batch</artifactId>
<!-- Groovy version -->
<version>2.1.8-01</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
With this in place, I could leave my groovy-all dependency the way I originally had it for the working/fully tested application like this:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactId>groovy-all</artifactId>
<!-- If possible, its better if this matches 2.1.8 in the plugin definition -->
<!-- but 2.2.1 worked fine here and allowed me to keep the original pom definition -->
<version>2.2.1</version>
</dependency>
The application runtime no longer references the ShortTypeHandling class and everything worked as it previously did.

Answer 2

You have to add (If you are using Gradle)
compile 'org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-backports-compat23:2.4.5'

Answer 3

I've just had this after updating the groovy-eclipse Feature in Eclipse (in order to try and fix intermittent save issues caused by https://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GRECLIPSE-1519). Specifically in my case, my Groovy JUnit tests were throwing this exception.
In light of the suggestions above, I checked my Eclipse settings, and it was using Groovy 2.3.4.xx whereas my Maven POM was specifying 2.1.8.xx. I went to Window -> Preferences -> Groovy -> Compiler and clicked "Switch to 2.1.8.xx...", restarting Eclipse when prompted, and this fixed it.

Answer 4

I've solved this issue by adding this dependency on my POM:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactId>groovy-backports-compat23</artifactId>
<version>2.4.5</version>
</dependency>
Then, it works like a charm.

Answer 5

Matthew Wise's solution worked for me, but in addition to restarting eclipse, I also had to do a project -> clean for it to recompile with the new compiler.
(I would have commented on his answer, but stack overflow has this stupid rule that you can't comment until you get more reputation)

Answer 6

I faced similar issue in our project. Surprisingly groovy version was not an issue.
I was building the project with older version of gradle than the expected gradle version for the project. That resolved the error.

Answer 7

Add following dependency to your pom.xml
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy.maven.runtime</groupId>
<artifactId>gmaven-runtime-default</artifactId>
<version>1.0-rc-3</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactId>groovy-all</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
Kuldeep Singh