jar - java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class XXX

Question

public class PropHolder {
  public static Properties prop;

  static {
    //code for loading properties from file
  }
}

// Referencing the class somewhere else:
Properties prop = PropHolder.prop;

class PropHolder is a class of my own. The class resides in the same JAR file of the main class. So that should not because any JAR is missing from classpath.

When I look in to the JAR file by jar tf myjarfile, I can see the PropHolder.class listed there.

Btw: the code is running fine on my local machine. But couldn't work when I deploy it with some script onto a Linux server. So I think it is not the problem of the code. But for some reason. the deploy process is very hard to track.

What could be the problem?

Answer 1

My best bet is there is an issue here:

static {
    //code for loading properties from file
}

It would appear some uncaught exception occurred and propagated up to the actual ClassLoader attempting to load the class. We would need a stacktrace to confirm this though.

Either that or it occurred when creating PropHolder.prop static variable.