JDK8 – Error “class file for javax.interceptor.InterceptorBinding not found” when trying to generate javadoc using Maven javadoc plugin

I am using JDK8 (tried it on my Eclipse workspace with Win x64 u25 JDK + on Linux launched by Jenkins – jdk-8u20-linux-x64, same problem for both).

I have multi-module Maven project (I am launching Maven goal “javadoc:aggregate” from a main module with packaging type “pom”).

Pom build section looks like this:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.8</source>
                <target>1.8</target>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <additionalparam>-Xdoclint:none</additionalparam>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

I always receive error:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-javadoc-plugin:2.10.1:aggregate (default-cli) on project uloan-global-build: An error has occurred in JavaDocs report generation:
[ERROR] Exit code: 1 - javadoc: error - com.sun.tools.doclets.internal.toolkit.util.DocletAbortException: com.sun.tools.doclets.internal.toolkit.util.DocletAbortException: com.sun.tools.doclets.internal.toolkit.util.DocletAbortException: com.sun.tools.javac.code.Symbol$CompletionFailure: class file for javax.interceptor.InterceptorBinding not found
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] Command line was: /usr/java/jdk1.8.0_20/jre/../bin/javadoc @options @packages

I have tried everything possible and tried to search on Google for a long time, but no success. I have found links, where people had similar problems, but without any information about possible solution:

http://marc.info/?l=maven-user&m=139615350913286&w=2

http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/maven-users/201409.mbox/[e-mail]%3E (suggesting to update JDK8 to > update 20, which I did, but problem is still the same).

Any hints or anyone experienced this kind of behavior as well (unfortunately it looks as quite “rare” problem for some reason)? Quite desperate about this…

Answer

This appears to be due to javax.transaction.Transactional (or any other class in your classpath for that matter) being itself annotated with javax.interceptor.InterceptorBinding, which is missing in classpath unless explicitly declared in dependencies:

@Inherited
@InterceptorBinding // <-- this ONE is causing troubles
@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD})
@Retention(value = RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Transactional {

Said that:

• javax.transaction.Transactional – comes with javax.transaction:javax.transaction-api:1.+ (or org.jboss.spec.javax.transaction:jboss-transaction-api_1.2_spec:1.0.0.Final) and is typically used in JPA/ORM/JMS apps to annotate transactional methods.
• javax.interceptor.InterceptorBinding – should come with javax.interceptor:javax.interceptor-api:1.+. But, although declared on top of Transactional, is not required for normal operation and (looks like because of this) is not getting fetched as a transitive dependency of your JPA framework.

As a result JDK8 javadoc tool fails to process the sources (if any of them are annotated with @Transactional).

Although it could be more specific about the place where this “error” has been found.

Issue fix: adding javax.interceptor:javax.interceptor-api:1.+ dependency fixes the issue.

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.interceptor</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.interceptor-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.2</version>
</dependency>

Note (January 2020): the latest (plausible) version is currently 1.2.2 (see https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.interceptor/javax.interceptor-api