Failed to initialize compiler: object java.lang.Object in compiler mirror not found

Question

On Ubuntu 16.04, I installed scala:

$ls ~/Binary/scala-2.11.8
bin  doc  lib  man
$grep -A 2 SCALA ~/.bashrc
SCALA=~/Binary/scala-2.11.8
SBT=~/Binary/sbt
export PATH=$PATH:$SCALA/bin:$SBT/bin

With openjdk8 installed, scala fails when opening the REPL:

$javac -version
javac 1.8.0_91
$ 
$scala
Welcome to Scala 2.11.8 (OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM, Java 9-internal).
Type in expressions for evaluation. Or try :help.
scala> 
Failed to initialize compiler: object java.lang.Object in compiler mirror not found.
** Note that as of 2.8 scala does not assume use of the java classpath.
** For the old behavior pass -usejavacp to scala, or if using a Settings
** object programmatically, settings.usejavacp.value = true.

Failed to initialize compiler: object java.lang.Object in compiler mirror not found.
** Note that as of 2.8 scala does not assume use of the java classpath.
** For the old behavior pass -usejavacp to scala, or if using a Settings
** object programmatically, settings.usejavacp.value = true.

How can I resolve it?

Answer 1

Using the Java 8 version of OpenJDK resolved this issue for me.

sudo update-alternatives --config java
sudo update-alternatives --config javac

Answer 2

Java 8 is deprecated, so downgrading to is must NOT be an acceptable solution.

The correct solution is to upgrade your SBT to 0.13.17 or higher.

Answer 3

This issue appears to be with Java 9 and gets solved with Java 8.

If you have Java 8 and Java 9, and you would like to keep both, you can set your environment variable JAVA_HOME to the Java 8 path.

For example:

export JAVA_HOME=/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_161.jdk/Contents/Home

You will need to replace jdk1.8.0_161.jdk with whichever version of the JDK that you have.

You can find that version with:

ls /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/

Once you set that environment variable, you can open a new terminal and run java -version to see if the version was set correctly.

EDIT:

It may be worth noting that I have a Mac even though this is a linux question.

Answer 4

Installing java version "1.8.0_144" resolved the issue for me. I had installed jdk 1.9 previously.