Intermittent NoClassDefFoundError when running a maven/surefire build in jenkins

Question

We are building a large multi module Maven project on Jenkins, including running a large number of unit test.

Once every few builds the build fails on NoClassDefF

Answer 1

If all your builds use the same workspace, and if its possible for several builds to run concurrently or overlap in any way, it's possible that the "clean" action is wiping out required build artifacts while another build is trying to use them.

If that's what's happening, the fix would be to have each build run use its own workspace.