Jetty: getting JSP's to compile on Java 8
25 July 2015

I have been trying to put an older embedded Jetty served application onto Java 8. The application's JSP files where, however, not compiling. This delayed having the benefits Java 8 brings to development.

After a lot of digging I discovered that the Mavan 'org.mortbay.jetty' namespace (a.k.a. groupid) had been superseded by 'org.eclipse.jetty'. The newer development and fixes by the Jetty project are in the later namespace. Therefore, by replacing the old 'org.mortbay.jetty' dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jsp-2.1-glassfish</artifactId>
  <version>9.1.02.B04.p0</version>
</dependency>

with the new 'org.eclipse.jetty'. dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.eclipse.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jetty-jsp</artifactId>
  <version>9.3.0.M1</version>
</dependency>

the JSP's compile and the older project now works with Java 8.