[news.eclipse.newcomer] ClassNotLoadedException in Eclipse debugger

[russ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Russell Bateman)]

1. I'm not certain this is the right forum.
2. I will be happy to file a bug should it prove necessary.
3. I apologize for cross-posting this to JavaRanch; I probably should have 
posted it here first.
4. One of the places I found a reference to this problem via Google was in 
an Eclipse forum, however, the circumstances may not be mine and the 
poster found a work-around; so far, I have not.

This only happens when I attempt to run my JUnit test in the debugger. It 
does not happen when I run my JUnit test without debugger nor does it 
happen in a production run of my greater product.

What I see:

"org.eclipse.debug.core.DebugException: 
com.sun.jdi.ClassNotLoadedException: Type has not been loaded occurred 
while retrieving component type of array."

As the first line of my test (not in setUp(), but in the first line of 
"real" code), I have:

  1. public void TestQuickUser()  
  2. {  
  3.     GQUser[]  smacko = new GQUser[ 0 ];  <-------------
  4.     ProgGlobals.setJUnitTest( true );  
  5.     .  
  6.     .  
  7.     .

GQUser is a class in another of the five smallish projects that make up my 
application. In the project of which my JUnit test is a part of, I get it 
via a JAR. Once I step past that statement, however, and I click on smacko 
in the (debugger) Variables pane to see its value, the value appears as 
(the exception) noted above.

This happens regardless of whether I put this code in my test method or in 
setUp().

I've Googled this and found 9 results--several people have seen this, some 
in exactly my same circumstances. Only 2 of them are interesting in that 
they have answers and neither shows any real explanation or an encouraging 
solution. One answer is by someone who completely gives up. The other one 
waffles. I've also asked around a bit here, but none of my acquaintances 
have ever seen it.

It would appear that the catastrophe in this is limited to ever wanting to 
examine GQUser in the debugger. If I put in print statements, it appears 
that things are working; it's just a disaster that I cannot look at this 
in the debugger, that's all, but this class is used all over.

While my example is created to simplify what's happening (which it does 
very nicely), I have a class, ProgGlobals, that must instantiate several 
pieces of static final data of this class in order to function. I am 
unable to see a way to program around it and I can't examine the sanity of 
any of those initializations (nor subsequent assignments, uses, etc.).

Thanks for reading this and for any comments made.

Russ Bateman