Unable to complete the scan for annotations for web application [/app] due to a StackOverflowError

eclipse, java, maven, spring, spring-mvc

Solution

In my case the `org.bouncycastle.asn1.DEREncodableVector` class, which was causing the cyclic dependency, was served by two jars in the class path.

`bcprov-jdk15on-1.47.jar` and `bcprov-jdk16-1.45.jar`

Excluded the unwanted jar(bcprov-jdk16-1.45.jar) and it worked well

Example: If apache CFX web services security is adding the unnecessary bcprov maven dependency, then it can be excluded as follows

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
    <artifactId>cxf-rt-ws-security</artifactId>
    <version>${org.apache.cxf.version}</version>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
          <groupId>org.bouncycastle</groupId>
          <artifactId>bcprov-jdk15on</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
 </dependency>

Problem

I am developing a Spring MVC application using STS (eclipse plugin) and maven. For creating the project, I followed the STS wizard for a new "Spring MVC project". Afterwards, I added some dependencies to other projects and libraries. However, when I am now trying to deploy the project to the integrated vFabric server of STS, I sometimes get an exception: ``` SEVERE: ContainerBase.addChild: start: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/wsa]] at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:154) at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901) ... Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Unable to complete the scan for annotations for web application [/app] due to a StackOverflowError. Possible root causes include a too low setting for -Xss and illegal cyclic inheritance dependencies. The class hierarchy being processed was [org.bouncycastle.asn1.ASN1EncodableVector->org.bouncycastle.asn1.DEREncodableVector->org.bouncycastle.asn1.ASN1EncodableVector] at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.checkHandlesTypes(ContextConfig.java:2179) ... ``` When issuing a "maven clean", followed by a "maven install" and a restart of the server, the exception sometimes doesn't get thrown and the application works fine. Yet, most of the times, it doesn't work. I guess there is no need to scan the bouncycastle dependencies for annotations. Can I somehow disable this scanning for some jars? I already tried adding `metadata-complete="true"` to my web.xml and increasing the stack size with no result. What can I do to fix this?

Original source