After spending weeks looking through Cocoon's java code, I finally fixed my problem. As it didn't jump out at me, I thought I might mention it to the list, so that it might help someone else out there. Simply, VisualCafe is not compatible with Cocoon. This is because VisualCafe changes your classpath. As this wouldn't make much of a difference in most cases, it does for Cocoon as Cocoon has to compile classes at runtime. So when Cocoon looks for com.sun.tools.javac.Main, it doesn't find it; instead, it finds VisualCafe's compiler. It attempts to use a 'classic' compiler, but this doesn't work with VisualCafe either. You wind up with a NullPointerException: because the compile didn't work, Cocoon tries to return a list of errors, but there aren't any, resulting in the error list being returned as null. I can't say for sure, but I'd guess that this is a bug in cocoon.components.language.programming.java.Javac.parseClassicStream(). The quick solution is to clear the CLASSPATH before starting Tomcat: set CLASSPATH= I hope this helps SOMEBODY out there.. if not, I hope the developers see this and try to tie up a loose end. ------- Liam Morley "light the deep, and bring silence to the world. light the world, and bring depth to the silence." --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please check that your question has not already been answered in the FAQ before posting. <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faqs.html> To unsubscribe, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>