Symptoms

1. Certain plugin operations always fail with a ParseErrorException as below, both in the browser and in the atlassian-confluence.log:

   Sample error from the Copy Space plugin

   2011-02-01 17:21:16,485 ERROR [TP-Processor22] [opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.VelocityResult] doExecute Unable to 
   render Velocity Template, '/templates/extra/copyspace/copyspaceoptions.vm'
    -- space: 9633795 | url: /spaces/copyspaceoptions.action | userName: mbuford | referer: 
   http://mfwiki.mfoundry.com/spaces/spacepermissions.action?key=MB22 | action: copyspaceoptions
   org.apache.velocity.exception.ParseErrorException: Invalid arg #0 in directive 
   #bodytag/templates/extra/copyspace/copyspaceoptions.vm[line 36, column 21]
   
   	at org.apache.velocity.Template.process(Template.java:141)
   	at com.atlassian.confluence.util.velocity.ConfigurableResourceManager.loadResource(ConfigurableResourceManager.java:363)
   	at com.atlassian.confluence.util.velocity.ConfigurableResourceManager.getResource(ConfigurableResourceManager.java:304)
   	at org.apache.velocity.runtime.RuntimeInstance.getTemplate(RuntimeInstance.java:1400)
   	at org.apache.velocity.runtime.RuntimeInstance.getTemplate(RuntimeInstance.java:1380)
   	at org.apache.velocity.app.VelocityEngine.getTemplate(VelocityEngine.java:401)
   	at com.opensymphony.webwork.dispatcher.VelocityResult.getTemplate(VelocityResult.java:146)
   

2. The plugin is installed by placing it in <confluence install>/confluence/WEB-INF/lib folder

Cause

The plugin is not compatible with the latest version of Velocity, and it is avoiding the compatibility layer provided for plugins installed in the regular way (through the UI).

According to Migrating to Velocity 1.5 the version of Velocity used since Confluence 2.8 does not accept the bodytag directive's syntax below because the first argument TextField is not surrounded in quotes. However, plugins have a special resourceloader applied that should fix the broken syntax. They are not applied to plugins loaded from WEB-INF/lib for performance reasons.

Using the stack trace from the Copy Space plugin above as an example. The offending line was:

#bodytag( TextField "label='space-name'" "name='newName'" "size=40" )

Workaround

There is a compatibility layer configured in the velocity.properties file. By default it includes this line:

confplugin.resource.loader.confluence.velocity13.compatibility=true

But if you install the plugin through WEB-INF/lib it does not use the "confplugin" resource loader, it uses the "confclass" resource loader, which does not use the velocity13 compatibility mode.

If one very much wanted to run the plugin from WEB-INF/lib, it can be done by extracting the velocity.properties file from WEB-INF/lib/confluence.jar and placing it in WEB-INF/classes. Then adding this line:

confclass.resource.loader.confluence.velocity13.compatibility=true

Resolution

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