Unable to start Groovy Spring Boot project in Eclipse - eclipse

Question

Here's an odd one. I have a Spring Boot app, that uses Groovy and Web starters. If I run mvn spring-boot:run it starts fine, and if I run mvn package and then java -jar demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar it also runs fine. But if I choose Run As -> Spring Boot Application I get this error:
12:16:22.200 ERROR [Tomcat-startStop-1 ] [ContainerBase] [] A child
container failed during start
java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Tomcat].StandardHost[localhost].TomcatEmbeddedContext[]]
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.report(FutureTask.java:122)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.get(FutureTask.java:192)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal(ContainerBase.java:939)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.startInternal(StandardHost.java:872)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1419)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1409)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:266)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1149)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:624)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:748)
Caused by: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Tomcat].StandardHost[localhost].TomcatEmbeddedContext[]]
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:167)
... 6 common frames omitted
Caused by: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [Pipeline[StandardEngine[Tomcat].StandardHost[localhost].TomcatEmbeddedContext[]]]
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:167)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5117)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
... 6 common frames omitted
Caused by: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [org.apache.catalina.authenticator.NonLoginAuthenticator[]]
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:167)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.startInternal(StandardPipeline.java:182)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
... 8 common frames omitted
Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: javax.servlet.ServletContext.getVirtualServerName()Ljava/lang/String;
at org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.startInternal(AuthenticatorBase.java:1141)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
... 10 common frames omitted
12:16:22.201 ERROR [main ] [ContainerBase] [] A child container failed during start
In Eclipe's POM editor I don't see the javax.servlet-api.jar file being brought in, so I added it, but no effect.
Eclipse: Oxygen 4.7.1a
STS: 3.9.1.201710100539-RELEASE
Java: 1.8.0_151
POM is straight from start.spring.io:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.example</groupId>
<artifactId>demo</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<name>demo</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.5.9.RELEASE</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
<artifactId>groovy</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.gmavenplus</groupId>
<artifactId>gmavenplus-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>addSources</goal>
<goal>addTestSources</goal>
<goal>generateStubs</goal>
<goal>compile</goal>
<goal>testGenerateStubs</goal>
<goal>testCompile</goal>
<goal>removeStubs</goal>
<goal>removeTestStubs</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Any ideas how to fix this?

Answer 1

Ah ha! I had to remove the "Groovy Libraries" and "Groovy DSL Support" from the Java Build Path in Eclipse - they were bringing in a servlet-api-2.4.jar file.