Maven "could not parse error message" (Java 7 + Maven 2)

Question

I have a maven-based GWT project that includes Guava. I am running into trouble with Maven trying (and failing) to compile the sources that it finds in guava-gwt*.jar:

could not parse error message:   symbol:   static setCountImpl
  location: class
/home/mark/.m2/repository/com/google/guava/guava-gwt/11.0.1/guava-gwt-11.0.1.jar(com/google/common/collect/AbstractMultiset.java):100: error: cannot find symbol
    return setCountImpl(this, element, count);
           ^

I can't figure out why Maven thinks it needs to compile the sources in guava-gwt. Here's what my project looks like:

├── pom.xml
└── src
    ├── main
    │   └── java
    └── test
        └── java
            └── SomeTestFile.java

SomeTestFile.java

import com.google.common.collect.ArrayListMultimap;
import com.google.common.collect.Multimap;
import org.junit.Test;

public class SomeTestFile {
    @Test
    public void testMethod() {
        Multimap<Integer, String> someMap = ArrayListMultimap.create();
        someMap.put(5, "five");
        System.out.println(someMap);
    }

}

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>guava-problem</groupId>
    <artifactId>guava-problem</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
            <artifactId>guava</artifactId>
            <version>11.0.1</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.google.guava</groupId>
            <artifactId>guava-gwt</artifactId>
            <version>11.0.1</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>4.8.2</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <source>1.6</source>
                    <target>1.6</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

I have already tried the following:

Removing the guava dependency (leaving only guava-gwt)
Scoping guava-gwt to provided

I'm not sure what else to try. guava-gwt includes sources because GWT will compile it into equivalent Javascript. But I don't want Maven to try to compile these sources.

Edit

Just a note...the test files themselves have no real need for guava-gwt over guava since they are compiled and run as Java code (they don't go through the GWT compile step). I don't need guava-gwt specifically for these tests but it needs to be available for my actual GWT client code.

Full Maven Output

mark@mark-peters:~/devel/guava-problem$ mvn -V clean test-compile
Apache Maven 2.2.1 (rdebian-1)
Java version: 1.7.0
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.32-38-generic" arch: "amd64" Family: "unix"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Unnamed - guava-problem:guava-problem:jar:1.0
[INFO]    task-segment: [clean, test-compile]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [clean:clean {execution: default-clean}]
[INFO] Deleting file set: /home/mark/devel/guava-problem/target (included: [**], excluded: [])
[INFO] [resources:resources {execution: default-resources}]
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /home/mark/devel/guava-problem/src/main/resources
[INFO] [compiler:compile {execution: default-compile}]
[INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
[INFO] [resources:testResources {execution: default-testResources}]
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /home/mark/devel/guava-problem/src/test/resources
[INFO] [compiler:testCompile {execution: default-testCompile}]
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /home/mark/devel/guava-problem/target/test-classes
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Compilation failure

/home/mark/.m2/repository/com/google/guava/guava-gwt/11.0.1/guava-gwt-11.0.1.jar(com/google/common/collect/AbstractMultiset.java):[19,0] error: cannot find symbol

could not parse error message:   symbol:   static setCountImpl
  location: class
/home/mark/.m2/repository/com/google/guava/guava-gwt/11.0.1/guava-gwt-11.0.1.jar(com/google/common/collect/AbstractMultiset.java):100: error: cannot find symbol
    return setCountImpl(this, element, count);
           ^

could not parse error message:   symbol:   method setCountImpl(AbstractMultiset<E>,E,int)
  location: class AbstractMultiset<E>
  where E is a type-variable:
    E extends Object declared in class AbstractMultiset
/home/mark/.m2/repository/com/google/guava/guava-gwt/11.0.1/guava-gwt-11.0.1.jar(com/google/common/collect/AbstractMultiset.java):105: error: cannot find symbol
    return setCountImpl(this, element, oldCount, newCount);
           ^


[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] For more information, run Maven with the -e switch
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Tue Feb 21 12:49:42 EST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 18M/212M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit (again)

Having found that the source of the problem has nothing to do with Guava but rather the Maven version (see my answer), I've updated the title and question to try to be a lot more helpful to future users.

Mark Peters · Accepted Answer

tl;dr

Maven 2 and JDK 7 are incompatible, as Maven tries to parse javac output which has changed in JDK 7.

Full explanation

Raghuram's note that this worked for him in Maven 3+ took me down the road of exploring this not as a config problem but as an actual Maven problem. I started doing more testing and found that this problem:

Occurs with Java 7 and Maven 2.2.1
Does not occur with Java 7 and Maven 3+
Does not occur with Java 6 and Maven 2.2.1

So at that point it became clear to me that the "could not parse error message" errors were relevant, and the problem probably had less to do with the guava-gwt compilation occurring and more to do with Maven not knowing how to handle the errors properly.

To test this I created a separate Maven project that has nothing to do with Guava:

├── pom.xml
└── src
    └── main
        └── java
            └── ClassWithWarnings.java

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>maven-problem</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-problem</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <compilerArgument>-Xlint:all</compilerArgument>
                    <showWarnings>true</showWarnings>
                    <showDeprecation>true</showDeprecation>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

ClassWithWarnings.java

public class ClassWithWarnings implements java.io.Serializable {}

Lo and behold, Maven tanks on this project as well when using Java 7:

mark@mark-peters:~/devel/maven-problem$ mvn -V compile
Apache Maven 2.2.1 (rdebian-1)
Java version: 1.7.0
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.7.0/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.32-38-generic" arch: "amd64" Family: "unix"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Unnamed - maven-problem:maven-problem:jar:1.0
[INFO]    task-segment: [compile]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [resources:resources {execution: default-resources}]
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /home/mark/devel/maven-problem/src/main/resources
[INFO] [compiler:compile {execution: default-compile}]
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /home/mark/devel/maven-problem/target/classes
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Compilation failure
could not parse error message: warning: [options] bootstrap class path not set in conjunction with -source 1.3
/home/mark/devel/maven-problem/src/main/java/ClassWithWarnings.java:1: warning: [serial] serializable class ClassWithWarnings has no definition of serialVersionUID
public class ClassWithWarnings implements java.io.Serializable {}
       ^


[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] For more information, run Maven with the -e switch
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: < 1 second
[INFO] Finished at: Tue Feb 21 13:10:47 EST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 14M/150M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

With Java 6, it still reports the warnings, but can parse the Javac output and so doesn't tank:

Apache Maven 2.2.1 (rdebian-1)
Java version: 1.6.0_20
Java home: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux" version: "2.6.32-38-generic" arch: "amd64" Family: "unix"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building Unnamed - maven-problem:maven-problem:jar:1.0
[INFO]    task-segment: [compile]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [resources:resources {execution: default-resources}]
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /home/mark/devel/maven-problem/src/main/resources
[INFO] [compiler:compile {execution: default-compile}]
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to /home/mark/devel/maven-problem/target/classes
[WARNING] /home/mark/devel/maven-problem/src/main/java/ClassWithWarnings.java:[1,7] [serial] serializable class ClassWithWarnings has no definition of serialVersionUID

[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: < 1 second
[INFO] Finished at: Tue Feb 21 13:18:39 EST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 9M/150M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

So it seems as if the problem was that the latest Maven 2 release doesn't know how to parse error messages from Java 7+ javac. Maven 3 does. I still haven't found documentation of this and am a little surprised that Maven doesn't give a warning when it tries to compile against a JDK version that it doesn't know how to support properly.

Raghuram · Answer

Converting my comment to an answer...

The exact pom file along with the test class above compiles fine on my Windows box with maven 3.0.4.

The problem could be with the maven version that you are using. Or there could be other maven goals in the actual pom, which may be causing an issue.

wolfc · Answer

For a similar problem I upgraded maven-compiler-plugin to a later version.

Nemrael · Answer

Happened to us, that we received the exact same failure, but with gradle instead of maven. After switching from ArrayListMultimap to LinkedListMultimap to error is gone. So it seems, that in version 11.0.2 at least the ArrayListMultimap is broken.

Maven "could not parse error message" (Java 7 + Maven 2)

Tags:

java

maven

guava

gwt

SomeTestFile.java

pom.xml

Edit

Full Maven Output

Edit (again)

Mark Peters

4 Answers

tl;dr

Full explanation

pom.xml

ClassWithWarnings.java

Mark Peters

Raghuram

wolfc

Nemrael

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Maven "could not parse error message" (Java 7 + Maven 2)

Tags:

java

maven

guava

gwt

SomeTestFile.java

pom.xml

Edit

Full Maven Output

Edit (again)

Mark Peters

4 Answers

tl;dr

Full explanation

pom.xml

ClassWithWarnings.java

Mark Peters

Raghuram

wolfc

Nemrael

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Recent Activity

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