Junit-Runner for Cucumber throws ClassNotFoundException if package name is 'cucumber' and no package for glue-code is specified

When running cucumber-JVM with its JUnit-Runner using gradle i’m getting a ClassNotFoundException/NoClassDefFoundError if the package containing the class annotated with @RunWith(Cucumber.class) is named ‘cucumber’ and the package is not excluded (e.g. the glue path is set to another package using @CucumberOptions(glue=package).

If RunCucumberTest is in a folder/package /src/test/java/cucumber/RunCucumberTest.java and the glue-code/step-definition at src/test/java/cucumber/steps, then the following class produces a ClassNotFoundException:

package cucumber;

import cucumber.api.junit.Cucumber;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
public class RunCucumberTest {}

Stacktrace:

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: nu/xom/ParsingException
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2701)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetPublicMethods(Class.java:2902)
    at java.lang.Class.getMethods(Class.java:1615)
    at cucumber.runtime.java.MethodScanner.scan(MethodScanner.java:40)
    at cucumber.runtime.java.JavaBackend.loadGlue(JavaBackend.java:86)
    at cucumber.runtime.Runtime.<init>(Runtime.java:91)
    at cucumber.runtime.Runtime.<init>(Runtime.java:69)
    at cucumber.runtime.Runtime.<init>(Runtime.java:65)
    at cucumber.api.junit.Cucumber.createRuntime(Cucumber.java:78)
    at cucumber.api.junit.Cucumber.<init>(Cucumber.java:58)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:45)
    at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:422)
    at org.junit.internal.builders.AnnotatedBuilder.buildRunner(AnnotatedBuilder.java:104)
       ...

The exception is thrown for different classes when running the tests repeatedly, e.g.:

• nu.xom.ParsingException
• org.dom4j.Element
• org.xmlpull.v1.XmlPullParserException
• net.sf.cglib.proxy.CallbackFilter

When I change the package where glue-code is searched, it works:

package cucumber;

import cucumber.api.junit.Cucumber;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;

@RunWith(Cucumber.class)
@CucumberOptions(glue = "cucumber.steps")
public class RunCucumberTest {}

The gradle-project can be found at https://github.com/Argelbargel/cucumber-jvm-junit-classnotfoundexecption

[Argelbargel]

Silly me! The problem is of course, that the package-name for my test-runner-class is the same as cucumber itself. Been staring at this the whole afternoon and only realized it after creating the issue-report 😄

[awaisabir]

@Argelbargel I LOVE YOU. SAVED MY LIFE ❤️