it is funny how easy one can get fooled by apparent coincidences in software development troubleshooting. three people. three similar issues with getting an app up and running after, apparently all pointing to the same culprit jar file.

things worked on friday… did an update on sunday, errors. yet the system works fine on the dev server. hmmm.

upshot was that fred’s error was that he was running his own build (i’ll save commenting on that for another blog post), and didn’t even have the jar. but since he knew i had the same apparent problem, he became fixated on some other cause.

my error turned out to be really weird copy of the directory in a weird location (that i didn’t even think of looking in!). how that happened, i dunno. i will attribute it to my lack of prowess on my new mac and i probably screwed up some linux command.

fortunately, tim came to the rescue and helped me find my error. quick directory deletion, i was back in action. his manifestation of the error was yet a third incarnation.

but on the surface, all errors pointed to the same jar file. when in reality, it had nothing to do with that specific jar file! beware rabbit holes and trick mirrors!