Why do I get a NullPointerException when initializing Spring

Question

I\'ve got a problem running a batch job on my server, whereas it runs fine from Eclipse on my development workstation.

I\'ve got my Spring environment set up using R

Answer 1

The cause of problem is -Djava.endorsed.dirs=$PROJECTHOME/target/lib org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory contains the following code:

static {
    ClassLoader cl = DefaultListableBeanFactory.class.getClassLoader();
    try {
        javaxInjectProviderClass = cl.loadClass("javax.inject.Provider"); //Line 103
    }
    catch (ClassNotFoundException ex) {
        // JSR-330 API not available - Provider interface simply not supported then.
    }
}

It causes a NullPointerException, because getClassLoader() returns null when class is loaded via -Djava.endorsed.dirs. From javadoc:

Some implementations may use null to represent the bootstrap class loader.

So, use -classpath (with explicit specification of all jars) instead of -Djava.endorsed.dirs