grails run-app randomly throws: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Lorg/codehaus/groovy/grails/plugins/web/async/api/ControllersAsyncApi

Question

When starting my grails 2.2.0 app, I am randomly getting the error message as below, but it also randomly succeeds starting the up without an error. No changes to the code, I just try to run the grails dev run-app multiple times.

$ grails dev run-app

I also tried a grails clean before, but that makes no difference; the error still randomly occurs.

Errors on startup:

| Packaging Grails application.....
webxml.WebxmlGrailsPlugin Loading default config file: class DefaultWebXmlConfig
webxml.WebxmlGrailsPlugin Did not find application config file: WebXmlConfig
webxml.WebxmlGrailsPlugin Loading default config file: class DefaultWebXmlConfig
| Running Grails application
context.GrailsContextLoader [GrailsContextLoader] Loading context. Creating parent application context
context.ContextLoader Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to locate constructor with Class parameter for class org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsControllerClass
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to locate constructor with Class parameter for class org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsControllerClass
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Lorg/codehaus/groovy/grails/plugins/web/async/api/ControllersAsyncApi;
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredFields(Class.java:2291)
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields(Class.java:1743)
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.web.async.api.ControllersAsyncApi
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
    ... 7 more
context.GrailsContextLoader Error initializing the application: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to locate constructor with Class parameter for class org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsControllerClass
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'pluginManager' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to locate constructor with Class parameter for class org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsControllerClass
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:680)
Caused by: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to locate constructor with Class parameter for class org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsControllerClass
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Lorg/codehaus/groovy/grails/plugins/web/async/api/ControllersAsyncApi;
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredFields(Class.java:2291)
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields(Class.java:1743)
    ... 5 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.web.async.api.ControllersAsyncApi
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
    ... 7 more

Environment:

• Mac OS X Lion
• JDK 1.6.0_31

Similar post, but still different, as I'm not running Tomcat:

• Grails application running on Tomcat6 - Context initialization failed

Answer 1

After changing servlets version from 3.0 to 2.5 (and vice versa) and this exception appeared.

I have resolved this problem by typing:

grails clean
grails clean-all

The dependencies has been fetched again and application began running.