GWT - Unable to find /path/to/war/WEB-INF/lib/shared? - google-app-engine

Question

I'm trying to use the Google Plugin for eclipse to run a GWT/GAE project as a web application, but I keep running into the error:
Unable to find path/to/war/WEB-INF/lib/shared
More specifically, I get:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
at com.google.appengine.tools.util.Logging.initializeLogging(Logging.java:35)
at com.google.appengine.tools.development.gwt.AppEngineLauncher.start(AppEngineLauncher.java:77)
at com.google.gwt.dev.DevMode.doStartUpServer(DevMode.java:509)
at com.google.gwt.dev.DevModeBase.startUp(DevModeBase.java:1093)
at com.google.gwt.dev.DevModeBase.run(DevModeBase.java:836)
at com.google.gwt.dev.DevMode.main(DevMode.java:311)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to find path/to/war/WEB-INF/lib/shared
at com.google.appengine.tools.info.SdkInfo._getLibs(SdkInfo.java:76)
at com.google.appengine.tools.info.SdkInfo.getLibsRecursive(SdkInfo.java:69)
at com.google.appengine.tools.info.SdkInfo.determineSharedLibFiles(SdkInfo.java:302)
at com.google.appengine.tools.info.SdkInfo.init(SdkInfo.java:237)
at com.google.appengine.tools.info.SdkInfo.getSdkRoot(SdkInfo.java:190)
at com.google.appengine.tools.info.SdkImplInfo.<clinit>(SdkImplInfo.java:19)
I had this application running fine previously, but it's been a while since I've worked on it. The GWT code compiles fine. It's only on attempting to run the code in a development server that this error arises. Looking through my previous commits I don't seem to see a time when WEB-INF/lib/shared ever existed, so either this is some new requirement or shared was just never committed in the past.
The only "solution" I've found online claims that they fixed it by removing appengine-utils-client-1.0.jar and appengine-utils-server-1.0.jar. However, neither of these seem to be in my project, so I don't think this solution will help me.
Any suggestions? Thank you much.

Answer 1

I ran into this problem also, after upgrading to GAE 1.8.0. Removing the appengine-tools-api.jar from the WEB-INF/lib directory solved the problem.

Answer 2

For anyone having the same trouble, I just ended up creating a new GWT setup and copying in my src files, and WEB-INF files that I specifically created/modified.

Answer 3

I got the same error when using GWTUpload. The previous posts helped me get on the right track, although I didn't have the jars mentioned in my web-inf/lib. Finally solved it by adding a Maven exclusion for appengine-tools-sdk. So my final GWTUpload pom.xml Maven code is:
<!-- GWTUpload -->
<dependency>
<groupId>com.googlecode.gwtupload</groupId>
<artifactId>gwtupload</artifactId>
<version>0.6.6</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.googlecode.gwtupload</groupId>
<artifactId>gwtupload-gae</artifactId>
<version>0.6.6</version>
<exclusions>
<!-- This exclusion got rid of the super hard to track down IllegalArgumentException on startup related to SdkInfo -->
<exclusion>
<artifactId>appengine-tools-sdk</artifactId>
<groupId>com.google.appengine</groupId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-fileupload</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-fileupload</artifactId>
<version>1.2.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>commons-io</groupId>
<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
<version>2.3</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>