NoSuchMethodError: org.slf4j.helpers.MessageFormatter.format

Question

I'm getting this error when running my application:

[ERROR] Apr 12, 2013 10:18:56 AM com.google.appengine.tools.development.ApiProxyLocalImpl log
[ERROR] INFO: javax.servlet.ServletContext log: Initializing Shiro environment
[ERROR] 1601 [main] INFO org.apache.shiro.web.env.EnvironmentLoader - Starting Shiro environment initialization.
[ERROR] 1931 [main] INFO org.apache.shiro.config.IniSecurityManagerFactory - Realms have been explicitly set on the SecurityManager instance - auto-setting of realms will not occur.
[ERROR] 1984 [main] ERROR org.apache.shiro.web.env.EnvironmentLoader - Shiro environment initialization failed
[ERROR] java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.slf4j.helpers.MessageFormatter.format(Ljava/lang/String;Ljava/lang/Object;Ljava/lang/Object;)Ljava/lang/String;
[ERROR]     at org.slf4j.impl.SimpleLogger.formatAndLog(SimpleLogger.java:222)
[ERROR]     at org.slf4j.impl.SimpleLogger.info(SimpleLogger.java:258)
[ERROR]     at org.apache.shiro.web.env.EnvironmentLoader.initEnvironment(EnvironmentLoader.java:146)
[ERROR]     at org.apache.shiro.web.env.EnvironmentLoaderListener.contextInitialized(EnvironmentLoaderListener.java:58)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.startContext(ContextHandler.java:548)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.Context.startContext(Context.java:136)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.startContext(WebAppContext.java:1250)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.doStart(ContextHandler.java:517)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.doStart(WebAppContext.java:467)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:130)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:130)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.doStart(Server.java:224)
[ERROR]     at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
[ERROR]     at com.google.appengine.tools.development.JettyContainerService.startContainer(JettyContainerService.java:228)
[ERROR]     at com.google.appengine.tools.development.AbstractContainerService.startup(AbstractContainerService.java:255)
[ERROR]     at com.google.appengine.tools.development.AbstractServer.startup(AbstractServer.java:79)
[ERROR]     at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl$Servers.startup(DevAppServerImpl.java:451)
[ERROR]     at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl.start(DevAppServerImpl.java:198)
[ERROR]     at com.google.appengine.tools.development.gwt.AppEngineLauncher.start(AppEngineLauncher.java:97)
[ERROR]     at com.google.gwt.dev.DevMode.doStartUpServer(DevMode.java:509)
[ERROR]     at com.google.gwt.dev.DevModeBase.startUp(DevModeBase.java:1068)
[ERROR]     at com.google.gwt.dev.DevModeBase.run(DevModeBase.java:811)
[ERROR]     at com.google.gwt.dev.DevMode.main(DevMode.java:311)
[ERROR] Apr 12, 2013 10:18:56 AM com.google.apphosting.utils.jetty.JettyLogger warn

This is the part of my pom.xml configuration which I think relates to this:

<properties>
        <!-- other properties omitted -->
        <slf4jVersion>1.5.11</slf4jVersion>
</properties>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
        <version>${slf4jVersion}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <!-- any library that uses commons-logging will be directed to slf4j -->
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
        <version>${slf4jVersion}</version>
        </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <!-- any library that uses slf4j will be directed to java.util.logging -->
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-jdk14</artifactId>
        <version>${slf4jVersion}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
            <version>${slf4jVersion}</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
        <version>${slf4jVersion}</version>
    </dependency>

I'm pretty sure I have the SLF4j version all setup into one version. What could be wrong in my configuration?

Answer 1

Use a newer version of slf4j, e.g. 1.7.5.

Answer 2

For anybody else that is being dogged by these errors I would also check if you are using: spring-ldap-test

I inadvertently had this included in my runtime and it depends on apacheds-all-1.5.5.jar which has its own implementation of some slf4j classes. I wasted a lot of time trying to get around this before I added -verbose:class to my java command and saw that these classes were being loaded from that jar.