java.lang.StackOverflowError when parsing Groovy script on Jenkins

Question

We are experiencing a problem with our Jenkins CI server.

Our CI implementation relies on several Groovy scripts, which we execute in Jenkins as "System Groovy scripts". This has been this way for years, and the scripts have undergone no recent modifications, and implement build flows, business logic steps such as version checking, etc.

Yesterday we started experiencing an exception in every Jenkins job that we tried to lauch that, one way or another, tried to execute Groovy scripts. The exception is:

java.lang.StackOverflowError
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.additiveExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12478)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.shiftExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:9695)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.relationalExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12383)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.equalityExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12307)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.regexExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12255)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.andExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12223)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.exclusiveOrExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12191)
            hundreds of similar lines
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.compoundStatement(GroovyRecognizer.java:7510)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.compatibleBodyStatement(GroovyRecognizer.java:8834)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.statement(GroovyRecognizer.java:899)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.compilationUnit(GroovyRecognizer.java:757)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.AntlrParserPlugin.transformCSTIntoAST(AntlrParserPlugin.java:131)
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.AntlrParserPlugin.parseCST(AntlrParserPlugin.java:108)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.SourceUnit.parse(SourceUnit.java:236)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit$1.call(CompilationUnit.java:161)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.applyToSourceUnits(CompilationUnit.java:846)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.doPhaseOperation(CompilationUnit.java:550)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.processPhaseOperations(CompilationUnit.java:526)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.compile(CompilationUnit.java:503)
at groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader.doParseClass(GroovyClassLoader.java:302)
at groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader.parseClass(GroovyClassLoader.java:281)
at groovy.lang.GroovyShell.parseClass(GroovyShell.java:731)
at groovy.lang.GroovyShell.parse(GroovyShell.java:743)
at groovy.lang.GroovyShell.parse(GroovyShell.java:770)
at groovy.lang.GroovyShell.parse(GroovyShell.java:761)
at groovy.lang.GroovyShell$parse.call(Unknown Source)
at com.cloudbees.plugins.flow.FlowDSL.executeFlowScript(FlowDSL.groovy:80)
at com.cloudbees.plugins.flow.FlowRun$FlyweightTaskRunnerImpl.run(FlowRun.java:219)
at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1759)
at com.cloudbees.plugins.flow.FlowRun.run(FlowRun.java:155)
at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:89)
at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:240)
at hudson.model.OneOffExecutor.run(OneOffExecutor.java:43)

This looks like that the Groovy parser inside Jenkins is reaching the top of the stack while trying to parse the groovy script (as I have said, this abruptly started to happen with many scripts that worked perfectly before and had undergone no recent modification).

Currently our Jenkins installation (v1.594) runs on a Websphere 8.5.5.2 application server on AIX v7.1 (don't know exactly the fix pack level and / or if it has recently suffered any kind of update, still trying to gather the info).

After a restart, we returned to normal behavior (all the scripts were working as usual again without any modification to them).

Does anyone know about some incompatibility of any underlying library with Jenkins Groovy parsing?

Answer 1

There is a problem with the groovy code; causing the parser to go nuts:

java.lang.StackOverflowError
at org.codehaus.groovy.antlr.parser.GroovyRecognizer.additiveExpression(GroovyRecognizer.java:12478)

Based on a similar ticket: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GROOVY-1783, it is possible that your code has circular references; or creating too many functions on the fly. You can take the approach of analyzing your code and trying to put anything that is going to make allocations outside of loops; in particular complex inline functions.

Another approach is to go look at the Build Flow plugin and scroll down the documentation and see how you could write an extension point rather than use groovy. This may not be easy to do and requires effort; but you can write a lot of tests for your code that way. You would still use groovy for the glue; but use java directly for the hot spots.

A third approach would be to file a ticket on the Groovy issue tracker; and see what the experts find out.