Upgrading from 8.0.32 to 8.0.35 triggers the following NPE: 18-May-2016 10:14:21.118 SEVERE [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal ContainerBase.addChild: start: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/inventorymanager]] at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:153) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:725) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:701) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:717) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:940) at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployWar.run(HostConfig.java:1816) at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:511) at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1142) at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:617) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745) Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at org.apache.jasper.servlet.TldScanner$TldScannerCallback.scanWebInfClasses(TldScanner.java:401) at org.apache.tomcat.util.scan.StandardJarScanner.scan(StandardJarScanner.java:208) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.TldScanner.scanJars(TldScanner.java:262) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.TldScanner.scan(TldScanner.java:106) at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JasperInitializer.onStartup(JasperInitializer.java:103) at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5261) at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:147) ... 10 more Seems it's because there's an empty folder WEB-INF/classes/META-INF. The workaround is to create an empty file in that folder.
Ok, the code in scanWebInfClasses was changed to use getResourcePaths, which returns null for non existing paths, which then causes a NPE. I will fix that.
The fix will be in 9M7, 8.5.3 and 8.0.36.
Great :-) Thank you.