Groovy class can't locate superclass in the same package

Question

I have a few groovy classes in the same package ( com.company.config ) in a multi-modular java-8 project.

All used to inherit a java interface ( MyInterface ), but some refactoring was needed so I created a groovy abstract class which resides in the same package as the other scripts; it implements MyInterface and is inherited by the other scripts.

Ever since this change, I can't seem to execute the scripts from java code anymore.

In particular, GroovyClassLoader::parseClass(File) throws:

org.codehaus.groovy.control.MultipleCompilationErrorsException: 
startup failed:<|C:\my_workspace\a_project_name\modules\module-setup\src\com\company\config\MyScript1Impl.groovy: 
7: unable to resolve class com.company.config.AbstractGroovyClass
@ line 7, column 1.
import com.company.config.AbstractGroovyClass
^

At line 7, you can indeed find the import declaration

import com.company.config.AbstractGroovyClass

which I added (despite the class being in the same package) after the first time the same error was thrown and after I read this .

The Exception is triggered in the following line in the java code:

public Object getInstance(File sourceFile) {
    try {
      GroovyClassLoader gcl = new GroovyClassLoader();
      Class clazz = gcl.parseClass(sourceFile); // << Here
      Object inst = clazz.newInstance();
      // ....
    }
    // ...
}

whereas I call this function with the following parameters

getInstance(
    new File("./modules/module-setup/src/com/company/config/"
         className + ".groovy" // className = "MyScript1Impl" in this case
    )
);

As already stated, before the introduction of the abstract class, everything was working fine.

Why can't the groovy class find its superclass in the same package, even with the import declaration?

---

This is the stack-trace of the internal calls:

org.codehaus.groovy.control.MultipleCompilationErrorsException: startup failed ...
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.ErrorCollector.failIfErrors(ErrorCollector.java:310)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.applyToSourceUnits(CompilationUnit.java:946)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.doPhaseOperation(CompilationUnit.java:593)
at org.codehaus.groovy.control.CompilationUnit.compile(CompilationUnit.java:542)
at groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader.doParseClass(GroovyClassLoader.java:298
at groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader.parseClass(GroovyClassLoader.java:268)
at groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader.parseClass(GroovyClassLoader.java:254)
at groovy.lang.GroovyClassLoader.parseClass(GroovyClassLoader.java:195)

The rest stack trace is relative to the application calls so it's unhelpful.

---

Edit I

I noticed indeed that the GroovyClassLoader does not know anything about other groovy classes and where they are located so I just added "./modules/module-setup/src/com/company/config/" in

GroovyClassLoader::addClassPath(String)

but I'm getting the same result as before.

The path is surely correct as the File instance is created with it and can be opened by the class loader.

Answer 1

I resolved it temporarily by loading the superclass via GroovyClassLoader::parseClass right before loading the actual inherited class.

final GroovyClassLoader gcl = new GroovyClassLoader();
// ...
// load superclass first
Class<?> abstractClass = gcl.parseClass(new File(classPath, "AbstractGroovyClass.groovy"));
// load the actual script
Class<?> clazz = gcl.parseClass(sourceFile);

It's definitely a bad answer as, if I had more groovy classes on which I depend on, I would have to manually parse them one by one. But it works...

Hoping someone can give a better answer.