Hbase on HDP 2.5: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.hadoop.hbase.util.ByteStringer

[#1]

I'm getting the following error with HDP 2.5 client libraries for Hbase. I use them via Gradle, having a line like that:

compile group: 'org.apache.hbase', name: 'hbase-client', version: '1.1.2.2.5.0.0-1245'

Then, upon running the app, again via Gradle, I do see hbase-protocols explicitly referred in the Zookeeper client classpath, , i.e. the line I see starting with

6879 [main] INFO org.apache.zookeeper.ZooKeeper - Client environment:java.class.path=

contains, among other JARs, a reference to the Gradle cache, i.e. C:\Users\testUser\.gradle\caches\modules-2\files-2.1\org.apache.hbase\hbase-protocol\1.1.2.2.5.0.0-1245\b037b1aff481f7dfc40f918a38005a6dce72fe49\hbase-protocol-1.1.2.2.5.0.0-1245.jar

So basically org.apache.hadoop.hbase.util.ByteStringer should be found. But it is not:

13640 [main-SendThread(hadoop-dev:2181)] DEBUG org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxn  - Reading reply sessionid:0x15853747d08002b, packet:: clientPath:null serverPath:null finished:false header:: 12,4  replyHeader:: 12,1530,0  request:: '/hbase-unsecure/meta-region-server,F  response:: #ffffffff0001a726567696f6e7365727665723a3136303230ffffffff7653ffffffe44971ffffffa3ffffffcf50425546a23a1773616e64626f782e686f72746f6e776f726b732e636f6d10ffffff947d18ffffffc2ffffffaeffffff93ffffff9cffffff852b100183,s{1378,1378,1478870023688,1478870023688,0,0,0,0,76,0,1378}
14143 [main] DEBUG org.apache.hadoop.hbase.client.ConnectionManager$HConnectionImplementation  - locateRegionInMeta parentTable=hbase:meta, metaLocation=, attempt=4 of 35 failed; retrying after sleep of 1005 because: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.hadoop.hbase.util.ByteStringer
14146 [main-SendThread(hadoop-dev:2181)] DEBUG org.apache.zookeeper.ClientCnxn  - Reading reply sessionid:0x15853747d08002b, packet:: clientPath:null serverPath:null finished:false header:: 13,8  replyHeader:: 13,1530,0  request:: '/hbase-unsecure,F  response:: v{'meta-region-server,'rolllog-proc,'backup-masters,'switch,'table,'draining,'region-in-transition,'table-lock,'running,'master,'namespace,'hbaseid,'online-snapshot,'replication,'splitWAL,'recovering-regions,'rs,'flush-table-proc}

As soon as I change my Gradle hbase-client reference to:

compile group: 'org.apache.hbase', name: 'hbase-client', version: '1.1.2'

i.e. the library becomes the default, non-recommended HBase libs, the problem goes away. But, of course, I do not want to use the non-recommended HBase client libraries - I had another issue that actually got resolved by using the Hortonworks libs.

[#2]

Sorry, this is a pain point that HBase has been trying to unravel for a while now. There isn't a good answer because the protobufs must match between client and server (that's why the trivial shading doesn't work). gRPC hasn't been too common in the HBase realm (at least from my point of view). Until we can get these changes into an Apache release and/or HDP release, you would have to find some way to isolate the conflicting protobuf versions.