Deploying web app using Ant results in NoClassDefFoundError
ant, java, tomcat
Solution
Just in case someone runs into the same problem I was having:
I was following the tutorial on the Tomcat website and I ran into the same `NoClassDefFoundError` issue when I tried to run `ant install`.
The tutorial mentions that you have to copy `$CATALINA_HOME/lib/catalina-ant.jar`1 (which contains the implementation code for the Ant custom tasks) to the `lib` directory of your Ant installation.
It does not mention, however, that you need to do the same thing for `tomcat-util.jar`. As soon as I copied `tomcat-util.jar` to my Ant directory, things started working (source).
1`$CATALINA_HOME` is the directory of your Tomcat installation, e.g. `/usr/share/tomcat8`
Problem
I'm using Ant 1.9.3 and Tomcat version 8.0. I'm using the Ant `deploy` target to deploy web apps in the Apache Tomcat using the `manager` credentials. The `deploy` target fails with the following exception: ``` java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/tomcat/util/codec/binary/Base64 at org.apache.catalina.ant.AbstractCatalinaTask.execute(AbstractCatalina Task.java:204) at org.apache.catalina.ant.DeployTask.execute(DeployTask.java:196) at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:292) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl. java:57) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAcces sorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:601) at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.jav a:106) at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348) at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:435) at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.performTasks(Target.java:456) at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeSortedTargets(Project.java:1393) at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTarget(Project.java:1364) at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.DefaultExecutor.executeTargets(DefaultExe cutor.java:41) at org.apache.tools.ant.Project.executeTargets(Project.java:1248) at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:851) at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.startAnt(Main.java:235) at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:280) at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:109) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.tomcat.util.codec.binary .Base64 at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:366) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:355) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:354) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:423) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:356) ... 19 more ``` When I tried to find the class `Base64` in the package `org\apache\tomcat\util\codec\binary\` which is in `tomcat-util.jar`, and it is in the classpath which I've verified by an echo in Ant build file. I'm not able to solve the issue.