spring - Java 1.8 ASM ClassReader failed to parse class file - probably due to a new Java class file version that isn't supported yet

Question

My web application runs fine on JDK 1.7 but crashes on 1.8 with the following exception (during application server startup with Jetty 8). I am using Spring version: 3.2.5.RELEASE.

Exception:

org.springframework.core.NestedIOException: ASM ClassReader failed to parse class file - probably due to a new Java class file version that isn't supported yet

I assume that problem occurs because of spring and "asm.jar" library on which it depends.

How do I resolve this?

Answer 1

As @prunge and @Pablo Lozano stated, you need Spring 4 if you want compile code to Java 8 (--target 1.8), but you can still run apps on Java 8 compiled to Java 7 if you run on Spring 3.2.X.

Check out http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/new-in-4.0.html

Note that the Java 8 bytecode level (-target 1.8, as required by -source 1.8) is only fully supported as of Spring Framework 4.0. In particular, Spring 3.2 based applications need to be compiled with a maximum of Java 7 as the target, even if they happen to be deployed onto a Java 8 runtime. Please upgrade to Spring 4 for Java 8 based applications.