Tomcat 7 cannot start up twice if there are any JARs on the classpath about gradle-tomcat-plugin

[bmuschko]

Thanks for providing a detailed description and sample project. Looks like this coming from the Tomcat internals. I'd have to investigate on this. I remember that my plugin code had to slightly change the JAR scanning behavior. That might have caused a side-effect.

[bmuschko]

Is this still a problem with the latest version of the plugin? Please also avoid using the method Task#execute. You find a better way to make your scenario work in the FAQ of the plugin (using finalizedBy).

[davidnortonjr]

Ben, it works great for me now, thanks!

[davidnortonjr]

Thank you also for the finalizedBy tip.

[benoitlouy]

I am having the same issue using gradle 2.4, the latest version of the plugin (2.2.2) and having changed the test task to use dependsOn and finializedBy to start and stop tomcat.
I forked @davidnortonjr repo and updated it with these changes.

Running ./gradlew :web:war integrationTest, I get the following output:

:web:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:web:compileGroovy UP-TO-DATE
:web:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:web:classes UP-TO-DATE
:web:war
:integration-tests:mode-a:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:compileGroovy UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:classes UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:war
:integration-tests:mode-a:integrationTomcatStart
Started Tomcat Server
The Server is running at http://localhost:8080/mode-a
:integration-tests:mode-a:compileTestJava UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:compileTestGroovy UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:processTestResources UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:testClasses UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:integrationTest UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-a:integrationTomcatStop
:integration-tests:mode-b:compileJava UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-b:compileGroovy UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-b:processResources UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-b:classes UP-TO-DATE
:integration-tests:mode-b:war
:integration-tests:mode-b:integrationTomcatStart
A child container failed during start
java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Tomcat].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/mode-b]]
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.report(FutureTask.java:122)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:188)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:1123)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.startInternal(StandardHost.java:816)
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1575)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1565)
        at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:262)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
        at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Tomcat].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/mode-b]]
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:154)
        ... 6 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Illegal class loader binding
        at org.apache.naming.resources.DirContextURLStreamHandler.get(DirContextURLStreamHandler.java:228)
        at org.apache.naming.resources.DirContextURLStreamHandler.openConnection(DirContextURLStreamHandler.java:90)
        at java.net.URL.openConnection(URL.java:971)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.JarURLConnection.<init>(JarURLConnection.java:84)
        at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.Handler.openConnection(Handler.java:41)
        at java.net.URL.openConnection(URL.java:971)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.scan.StandardJarScanner.process(StandardJarScanner.java:258)
        at org.apache.tomcat.util.scan.StandardJarScanner.scan(StandardJarScanner.java:177)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.processJarsForWebFragments(ContextConfig.java:1902)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.webConfig(ContextConfig.java:1272)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.configureStart(ContextConfig.java:889)
        at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.lifecycleEvent(ContextConfig.java:386)
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:117)
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleBase.java:90)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5412)
        at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
        ... 6 more