IncompatibleClassChangeError: class ClassMetadataReadingVisitor has interface ClassVisitor as super class

Question

I have built a web application using spring-mvc and mongodb as database. I used maven3 to build the application.

Project builds successfully but when application starts I am getting the following error in the logs due to which my application does not start. This used to work few months ago.

Caused by: java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError: class org.springframework.core.type.classreading.ClassMetadataReadingVisitor has interface org.springframework.asm.ClassVisitor as super class

Please let me know if any pointers or if you guys need more information.

Answer 1

This error happens when the loaded class i.e. ClassMetadataReadingVisitor does not respect the contract of inherited abstract class or interface i.e. ClassVisitor.

Looks like at load time different versions of the above classes are getting loaded in your case.

Seems you have new spring-core jar and old spring-asm jar in your application. ClassMetadataReadingVisitor class is getting loaded from spring-core and ClassVisitor from spring-asm.

Please check using maven dependency:tree command to see the dependent jars.

Answer 2

In spring version > 3.2.0, you no longer need to explicitly include spring-asm since it has already been included in spring-core.

Remove spring-asm from your build definition and ensure that spring-core is there.

http://static.springsource.org/spring-framework/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/migration-3.2.html#migration-3.2-inline-asm