Why does sbt compile fail with StackOverflowError? - scala

Question

I am working on a Scala project that has been in existence for a few years but is new to me. My task is to upgrade it from Scala 2.9.3 to 2.11.7, along with its dependencies. I have gotten past the errors and warnings, but I cannot get the project to compile successfully in SBT. I always get a StackOverflowError in pretty much the same place. The stacktrace looks like this, but details vary with the Xss setting (currently 4M, but have tried as high as 24M):
java.lang.StackOverflowError
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.Erasure$Eraser.typed1(Erasure.scala:698)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.runTyper$1(Typers.scala:5395)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.scala$tools$nsc$typechecker$Typers$Typer$$typedInternal(Typers.scala:5422)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.body$2(Typers.scala:5369)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.typed(Typers.scala:5373)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.typedQualifier(Typers.scala:5471)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.typedQualifier(Typers.scala:5479)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.Erasure$Eraser.adaptMember(Erasure.scala:644)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.Erasure$Eraser.typed1(Erasure.scala:698)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.runTyper$1(Typers.scala:5395)
at scala.tools.nsc.typechecker.Typers$Typer.scala$tools$nsc$typechecker$Typers$Typer$$typedInternal(Typers.scala:5422)
SBT_OPTS looks like this:
-Xmx2G -Xss4M -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
I can 'make' the project successfully in Intellij, and others can pull my changes from GitHub and compile the project in sbt, so the issue seems to be local to my machine (a recent quad-core Macbook Pro with 16GB RAM). Other Scala/sbt projects compile successfully for me on this machine.
Here are other relevant details:
Scala version: 2.11.7
Java version: java version "1.8.0_66" (build 1.8.0_66-b17)
sbt version: 0.13.7 (have also tried 0.13.9)
I have completely rebuilt the ivy2 cache and cleared the lib_managed directory. The version of the scala-compiler.jar is the same as is used on at least one machine that can 'sbt compile' the code successfully. I did a clean reinstall of sbt (via brew remove sbt, manual removal of ~/.sbt directory, then brew install sbt).
I have not tried to isolate the line of source code being compiled when the error occurs. I have assumed it would be more productive to look for a configuration issue or dependency conflict somewhere.
Any suggestions for further troubleshooting will be appreciated.
[Added...] It may be helpful to add that, as an experiment, I downloaded the Scala language source code from https://github.com/scala/scala and got the following very similar error trying to sbt compile it:
java.lang.StackOverflowError
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$OuterPathTransformer.outerValue(ExplicitOuter.scala:229)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$ExplicitOuterTransformer.transform(ExplicitOuter.scala:441)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$ExplicitOuterTransformer.transform(ExplicitOuter.scala:352)
at scala.reflect.internal.Trees$class.itransform(Trees.scala:1345)
at scala.reflect.internal.SymbolTable.itransform(SymbolTable.scala:16)
at scala.reflect.internal.SymbolTable.itransform(SymbolTable.scala:16)
at scala.reflect.api.Trees$Transformer.transform(Trees.scala:2555)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.TypingTransformers$TypingTransformer.transform(TypingTransformers.scala:44)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$OuterPathTransformer.scala$reflect$internal$Trees$UnderConstructionTransformer$$super$transform(ExplicitOuter.scala:219)
at scala.reflect.internal.Trees$UnderConstructionTransformer$class.transform(Trees.scala:1693)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$OuterPathTransformer.transform(ExplicitOuter.scala:291)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$ExplicitOuterTransformer.transform(ExplicitOuter.scala:459)
at scala.tools.nsc.transform.ExplicitOuter$ExplicitOuterTransformer.transform(ExplicitOuter.scala:352)
at scala.reflect.internal.Trees$class.itransform(Trees.scala:1347)
at scala.reflect.internal.SymbolTable.itransform(SymbolTable.scala:16)
at scala.reflect.internal.SymbolTable.itransform(SymbolTable.scala:16)
at scala.reflect.api.Trees$Transformer.transform(Trees.scala:2555)
Here is something interesting. From this post I found out about launching sbt with a -d flag for debugging info. Got the following output:
Kevins-MacBook-Pro:scala kdoherty$ sbt -d
[process_args] java_version = '1.8.0_66'
# Executing command line:
java
-Xmx2G
-Xss4M
-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
-Xmx384m
-Xss512k
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
-agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=5005
-jar
/usr/local/Cellar/sbt/0.13.9/libexec/sbt-launch.jar
So somewhere my SBT_OPTS settings are being overridden (by defaults, I guess). Now I need to find where those defaults are coming from.

Answer 1

I figured it out. Once I knew that the -d flag would tell me what settings SBT was actually using, I saw that the values in my SBT_OPTS environment variable were being clobbered by other, lower settings. Where were those coming from? From my JAVA_OPTS env variable! I should have noticed them sooner, but now I know I can keep those Java options as they are and override them by adding the SBT-specific settings to my /usr/local/etc/sbtopts file, using the somewhat awkward format of
-J-Xmx2G
-J-Xss2M
Using the values shown I was able to run sbt compile successfully on my project.
I hope someone finds this useful.

Answer 2

Add to the bottom of /usr/local/etc/sbtopts
-J-Xmx4G
-J-Xss4M
All set.

Answer 3

I just added -Xss in my Intellij sbt properties and the issue is resolved.
Intellij SBT properties

Answer 4

Relevant parts from the output of sbt -h:
# jvm options and output control
JAVA_OPTS environment variable, if unset uses ""
.jvmopts if this file exists in the current directory, its contents
are appended to JAVA_OPTS
SBT_OPTS environment variable, if unset uses ""
.sbtopts if this file exists in the current directory, its contents
are prepended to the runner args
Thus, in my case I solved the problem by creating a file .sbtopts with content
-J-Xmx4G
-J-Xss4M
in the project directory.
Note: Running sbt -d shows what settings have been used, for instance:
$ sbt -d
[addSbt] arg = '-debug'
[process_args] java_version = '8'
# Executing command line:
java
-Xms1024m
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=128m
-XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=256m
-Xmx2G
-Xss2M
-jar
/path/to/sbt-launch.jar
-debug

Answer 5

I was unable to get this to work via the provided answers. build.sbt settings and the sbtopts file both failed to solve this error for me. What I had to do was run sbt with the -mem flag, for example:
sbt -mem 2048 compile
and now my projects built. If using IntelliJ you can also go to
Preferences > Build, Execution, Deployment > Build Tools > sbt
and set Maximum heap size, MB to whatever target you need.

Answer 6

I discovered the SBT_OPT setting in the bin/sbt file of my sbt install was affecting the memory values set in my projects build.sbt
updating the existing -Xss value in this file from 1M to 8M raised the memory size of the Scalac stack to a point I stopped getting StackOverflow exceptions in the sbt-invoked compiler. This seemed odd because the sbt documented approach to setting stack size in the compiler is to do this is with the -J-Xss setting.
Sbt doesn't seem to actually enable you to set the compiler's stack memory. While a build.sbt accepts the following configuration as a valid setting, it doesn't seem to apply the value in the compiler:
scalacOptions in ThisBuild ++= Seq(-J-Xss8M)
I suspect that is a bug or non-implemented functionality

Answer 7

I too run into this problem recently and I discovered a working solution for it with sbt 1.3.13.
create a .sbtopts file under project root
add -J-Xss100M (or any thread stack size you think suitable) to the .sbtopts file

Answer 8

There are multiple Correct Answers already. But what worked for me is below,
// Created and Added a File: .jvmopts in the Project Root Folder with below Parameters.
-Xms3022m
-Xmx4048m
-Xss124m
-XX:MaxPermSize=4048m
-XX:MaxMetaspaceSize=512m
-XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=128m