What causes java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError?

Question

This means that you have made some incompatible binary changes to the library without recompiling the client code. Java Language Specification §13 details all such changes, most prominently, changing non-static non-private fields/methods to be static or vice versa.

Recompile the client code against the new library, and you should be good to go.

UPDATE: If you publish a public library, you should avoid making incompatible binary changes as much as possible to preserve what's known as "binary backward compatibility". Updating dependency jars alone ideally shouldn't break the application or the build. If you do have to break binary backward compatibility, it's recommended to increase the major version number (e.g. from 1.x.y to 2.0.0) before releasing the change.

Your newly packaged library is not backward binary compatible (BC) with old version. For this reason some of the library clients that are not recompiled may throw the exception.

This is a complete list of changes in Java library API that may cause clients built with an old version of the library to throw java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError if they run on a new one (i.e. breaking BC):

1. Non-final field become static,
2. Non-constant field become non-static,
3. Class become interface,
4. Interface become class,
5. if you add a new field to class/interface (or add new super-class/super-interface) then a static field from a super-interface of a client class C may hide an added field (with the same name) inherited from the super-class of C (very rare case).

Note: There are many other exceptions caused by other incompatible changes: NoSuchFieldError, NoSuchMethodError, IllegalAccessError, InstantiationError, VerifyError, NoClassDefFoundError and AbstractMethodError.

The better paper about BC is "Evolving Java-based APIs 2: Achieving API Binary Compatibility" written by Jim des Rivières.

There are also some automatic tools to detect such changes:

• japi-compliance-checker
• clirr
• japitools
• sigtest
• japi-checker

Usage of japi-compliance-checker for your library:

japi-compliance-checker OLD.jar NEW.jar

Usage of clirr tool:

java -jar clirr-core-0.6-uber.jar -o OLD.jar -n NEW.jar

Good luck!

While these answers are all correct, resolving the problem is often more difficult. It's generally the result of two mildly different versions of the same dependency on the classpath, and is almost always caused by either a different superclass than was originally compiled against being on the classpath or some import of the transitive closure being different, but generally at class instantiation and constructor invocation. (After successful class loading and ctor invocation, you'll get NoSuchMethodException or whatnot.)

If the behavior appears random, it's likely the result of a multithreaded program classloading different transitive dependencies based on what code got hit first.

To resolve these, try launching the VM with -verbose as an argument, then look at the classes that were being loaded when the exception occurs. You should see some surprising information. For instance, having multiple copies of the same dependency and versions you never expected or would have accepted if you knew they were being included.

Resolving duplicate jars with Maven is best done with a combination of the maven-dependency-plugin and maven-enforcer-plugin under Maven (or SBT's Dependency Graph Plugin, then adding those jars to a section of your top-level POM or as imported dependency elements in SBT (to remove those dependencies).

Good luck!

I have also discovered that, when using JNI, invoking a Java method from C++, if you pass parameters to the invoked Java method in the wrong order, you will get this error when you attempt to use the parameters inside the called method (because they won't be the right type). I was initially taken aback that JNI does not do this checking for you as part of the class signature checking when you invoke the method, but I assume they don't do this kind of checking because you may be passing polymorphic parameters and they have to assume you know what you are doing.

Example C++ JNI Code:

void invokeFooDoSomething() {
    jobject javaFred = FredFactory::getFred(); // Get a Fred jobject
    jobject javaFoo = FooFactory::getFoo(); // Get a Foo jobject
    jobject javaBar = FooFactory::getBar(); // Get a Bar jobject
    jmethodID methodID = getDoSomethingMethodId() // Get the JNI Method ID


    jniEnv->CallVoidMethod(javaFoo,
                           methodID,
                           javaFred, // Woops!  I switched the Fred and Bar parameters!
                           javaBar);

    // << Insert error handling code here to discover the JNI Exception >>
    //  ... This is where the IncompatibleClassChangeError will show up.
}

Example Java Code:

class Bar { ... }

class Fred {
    public int size() { ... }
} 

class Foo {
    public void doSomething(Fred aFred, Bar anotherObject) {
        if (name.size() > 0) { // Will throw a cryptic java.lang.IncompatibleClassChangeError
            // Do some stuff...
        }
    }
}