Problem

./gradlew build fails on master at the project-configuration phase:

* What went wrong:
A problem occurred configuring root project 'data-integration-library'.
> Failed to create Jar file ~/.gradle/caches/jars-8/<hash>/jackson-core-2.15.4.jar.

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unsupported class file major version 61
    at org.objectweb.asm.ClassReader.<init>(ClassReader.java:196)
    at org.gradle.internal.classpath.InstrumentingClasspathFileTransformer

This affects every PR, not a single branch — master itself reproduces it. CI was last green on 2025-06-06; the next CI run (on PR #93) failed with this error.

Root cause

build.gradle pins three plugins to dynamic versions:

classpath 'org.jfrog.buildinfo:build-info-extractor-gradle:latest.release'
classpath "org.shipkit:shipkit-auto-version:latest.release"
classpath "org.shipkit:shipkit-changelog:latest.release"

Between June 2025 and now, JFrog published build-info-extractor-gradle 6.0.0+, which latest.release now resolves to (current: 6.0.4). 6.0.0+ bumped its jackson-databind dependency from 2.14.1 → 2.15.4, transitively pulling in jackson-core:2.15.4 — a multi-release JAR containing Java 17 (major version 61) class files.

Gradle 6.8.1's classpath instrumenter walks every class in every buildscript jar (to cache an instrumented copy under ~/.gradle/caches/jars-8/) using a bundled ASM that predates Java 17 bytecode support. It cannot read the MR-JAR Java 17 entries and aborts before the project ever compiles.

This was confirmed locally with JDK 8 + Gradle 6.8.1 (matching CI). Cache invalidation, daemon restart, and --refresh-dependencies all reproduce identically — it is a deterministic incompatibility, not a transient cache/network issue.

Fix

Pin build-info-extractor-gradle to 5.2.5 — the last release on jackson-databind:2.14.1, which is Java 8 compatible and configures cleanly under Gradle 6.8.1.

The other two latest.release lines (shipkit-auto-version, shipkit-changelog) do not transitively depend on jackson and are not currently broken; they are left untouched in this minimal fix but remain a latent risk for future drift.

Validation

Local build with the pin applied (JDK 1.8.0_282 + Gradle 6.8.1):

$ ./gradlew build
...
> Task :cdi-core:check
> Task :cdi-core:build
BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 50s
13 actionable tasks: 9 executed, 4 up-to-date

All existing tests pass.

Back-compatibility

• No behavior change at runtime — this is a build-time plugin version pin only.
• Plugin 5.2.5 has been generally available since well before the last green CI run, so this rolls back to a known-good state rather than introducing new risk.