Bug 56045

Summary: Cannot start embedded container without Jasper
Product: Tomcat 7 Reporter: Dave Syer <david_syer>
Component: JasperAssignee: Tomcat Developers Mailing List <dev>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED    
Severity: normal    
Priority: P2    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: PC   
OS: Linux   

Description Dave Syer 2014-01-21 09:43:18 UTC 
If I don't have a web.xml and I'm not using JSPs I shoudln't need Jasper on the classpath (it worked in 7.0.47)

Caused by: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError: null
	at org.apache.catalina.startup.TldConfig.createTldDigester(TldConfig.java:94)
	at org.apache.catalina.startup.TldConfig.init(TldConfig.java:576)
	at org.apache.catalina.startup.TldConfig.lifecycleEvent(TldConfig.java:559)
	at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
	at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleBase.java:90)
	at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.setStateInternal(LifecycleBase.java:402)
	at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.init(LifecycleBase.java:110)
	at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:139)
	... 7 common frames omitted
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: null
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.descriptor.DigesterFactory.idFor(DigesterFactory.java:107)
	at org.apache.tomcat.util.descriptor.DigesterFactory.<clinit>(DigesterFactory.java:59)
	... 15 common frames omitted
Comment 1 Konstantin Kolinko 2014-01-23 18:46:26 UTC 
You do not need Jasper, but you need the JSP APIs - the "jsp-api.jar" file.

1. The common XML Schema for the Servlet 3.0 deployment descriptor does depend on the XML Schema for the JSP 2.2 deployment descriptor.

2. Tomcat processes tag libraries and instantiates Listeners defined in their TLD files regardless of whether you use Jasper. This may need the schema for TLD files.


Note that both of these issues have been fixed in Tomcat 8.
Re: 1: in Tomcat 8 the schemas are bundled in servlet-api.jar
Re: 2: in Tomcat 8 the listeners are initialized by Jasper and are injected into web application via ServletContext.addListener() API.
Comment 2 Dave Syer 2014-01-23 20:07:37 UTC 
Good to know that jasper is a sufficient but not necessary dependency, but that doesn't really help if you don't want anything to do with JSPs.

I did raise this issue specifically against Tomcat 7. It's a regression (and a pretty significant one) between 7.0.47 and 7.0.50, so I'm kind of hoping it might be fixable.
Comment 3 Mark Thomas 2014-01-24 10:26:22 UTC 
Fixed in trunk and will be included in 7.0.51 onwards.