Warning: modified in the future

Question

I am getting the warning

Warning: sendmailpm.jsp modified in the future. 

What does this mean?

Answer 1

I had this error too, but after reading some answers above i realized that is was due to the change i've done in the computer to some days ahead because of the test of a functionality that requires date manipulation.

Here is what happened:

1 - To perform Unit Test of a new implemented functionality i had to set the computer date to 4 days in the future.

2 - When i performed the test the compiler compiled the class automatically, as expected.

3 - Therefore when i was trying to rebuild the project the IDE detected that the file was (ironically) created in the future. (LoL - that's why i love Java you can even code in the future.).

So +1 @jmanning2k.

I hope it can help somebody facing this issue.

Answer 2

During an Ant build, this warning can be output during a task.

[copy] Warning: foo\bar.txt modified in the future.

Ant's <copy> task by default won't copy files if the destination files are newer than the source. This saves much time and disk I/O. However you can override this behavior with the option <copy overwrite="true">. This tells Ant that you know what you're doing; overwrite the destination files regardless of their modification date. This will also suppress the warning.

Answer 3

JSPs are compiled on-the-fly to servlets. The servlet container compares the "last modified" dates of both to see if the JSP has been changed and the servlet needs to be updated. A "last modified" date in the future indicates that something is wrong with the system clock, which is relevant because it could disrupt the abovementioned mechanism, leading to servlets that are not updated.

Answer 4

That warning appear to me too, it was because a previously changed the time in my computer to fix it because it was like 20 minutes ahead of the actual time

Answer 5

If you have a jar file that you are trying to install at remote server. It might happen that remote server timestamp is not matching with your time zone. If your timezone is couple of hour ahead than the remote server then you might get this issue. I also tried out one more trick.. When you create a JAR file, then go to system time and set a date couple of months back and try installing the JAR, you get this error.

Answer 6

JSP files are compiled. Many servers also allow you to replace the files on a running server. It then compares the timestamp of the compiled source and the timestamp of the jsp file to determine if it needs to recompile.

If the file is dated in the future, the jsp file will always be newer than the class. This gives you a warning.

Check the timestamp on the file. Perhaps someone created it on a computer with an incorrect clock, and now it appears to be "created in the future". Or perhaps the server has the incorrect date (check timezone settings).

Are there remote file servers involved? Clock drift between a web server and a file server can cause this error too.

To diagnose this further, you'd have to give us some hints - what jsp server, what OS, what filesystem?