The WebMvcConfigurationSupport.addDefaultHttpMessageConverters() method catches Throwable for SourceHttpMessageConverter instantiation; whereas, the rest of the code base correctly catches Error for SourceHttpMessageConverter instantiation (to handle errors such as NoClassDefFoundError).

Throwable should not be caught since it can mask other categories of failures (such as configuration errors).

Comment From: sbrannen

Fixed in 72b44cebea31e9db6faffa5c3e62b8f0d560e19b.