"Failed to Deploy Artefact error" in Eclipse Mule ESB project

Question

I'm trying to run a trivial http echo app against the 3.50 CE runtime and I get the following stack trace(s) when I try to run

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Failed to deploy artifact 'default', see below           +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.mule.module.launcher.DefaultArchiveDeployer.guardedDeploy(DefaultArchiveDeployer.java:274)
...
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.mule.module.launcher.DefaultArchiveDeployer.addZombieApp(DefaultArchiveDeployer.java:325)

Additional context:
I've just started working with Mule (using the Eclipse Plugin). I initially had the trial package which is configured for Enterprise edition and I had that working with some of the trivial examples - hello world and echo.

I then downloaded the community runtimes and changed the targets on the projects, at that point I had been getting No Application Name errors, and I tried rebuilding them as new projects with CE targets from the start.

I also had been running them as mule applications, but this page
https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/Studio+in+Eclipse seems to indicate I must use maven ( I've set that up - although the automatic POM management doesn't seem to be working) but I still get the above failure.

There's no indication of why it's failing, as far as I can tell my projects output is valid.

Any suggestions welcome.

Answer 1

For what it's worth this is working now (fixed it shortly after posting the question even though it's been a blocker since yesterday).

If anyone else runs aground of the same issue..

I wasn't using the latest Community Edition runtime so I upgraded using the eclipse plugin install from (http://studio.mulesoft.org/r4/studio-runtimes).

I think this might have had something to do with it as I had previously been using the r4 plugin (http://studio.mulesoft.org/r4/plugin) with the Eclipse hosted 3.5 CE. Possibly the plugin is not backward compatible with the Runtimes.

basically once I completed the install and restarted I upgraded my project to use the new CE (changing the project setting and the flow xml). It worked first time.

Oddly all my Mule-Maven options have disappeared, but that's a separate question.