[GROOVY-9469] Original exception during global AST transformation no longer preserved in error message

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 3.0.0, 3.0.2
• Fix Version/s: 4.0.0-alpha-1, 3.0.3, 2.5.11
• Component/s: Compiler
• Flags: Patch
• Assignee: Paul King
• Reporter: Marcin Zajaczkowski
• Created: 15/Mar/20 16:43
• Updated: 11/Nov/20 02:01
• Resolved: 29/Mar/20 10:28

Description

Global AST transformation in Spock throws exception with meaningful error message if used with incompatible Groovy version (e.g. Spock for Groovy 2.5 executed with Groovy 2.4):

Could not instantiate global transform class org.spockframework.compiler.SpockTransform specified at
jar:file:/.../spock-core-1.3-groovy-2.5.jar!/META-INF/services/org.codehaus.groovy.transform.ASTTransformation
because of exception org.spockframework.util.IncompatibleGroovyVersionException:
The Spock compiler plugin cannot execute because Spock 1.3.0-groovy-2.5 is not compatible
with Groovy 2.4.3. For more information, see http://versioninfo.spockframework.org
Spock artifact: file:/.../spock-core-1.3-groovy-2.5.jar
Groovy artifact: file:/.../groovy-2.4.3.jar

However, it stopped working with Spock 2.0 for Groovy 2.5 and Groovy 3.0:

Could not instantiate global transform class org.spockframework.compiler.SpockTransform specified at
jar:file:/.../spock-core-2.0-M1-groovy-2.5.jar!/META-INF/services/org.codehaus.groovy.transform.ASTTransformation
because of exception java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException

It's not very constructive for people seeing that error message. Firstly, I suspected some incompatibilities in the Spock code which completely fails with new Groovy. However, it turned out that the exception is hidden by Groovy itself.

I slightly modified ASTTransformationVisitor it detect that situation and get target/cause in a case of InvocationTargetException - my PR.

It helped, however, I haven't found any change in the ASTTransformationVisitor which could cause that regression. It might to some 2.5→3.0 change how constructor are called (e.g. around CachedConstructor which is used, but doesn't seem to intercept the exception) or anything else. You might want to investigate it - it worked without my tweak in Groovy 2.5.

Related Spock issues: https://github.com/spockframework/spock/issues/1067

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #1193