Michael, it took me a while looking into this issue -- but having done so now, my conclusion is that the descibed behaviour (which I could reproduce) is NOT inconsistent with the VM spec.
I've added a comment with the relevant VM spec quote to http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JDO-194 In fact, ClassLoader.loadClass() is a place where LinkageErrors may occur, which have to be dealt with. Martin Michael Bouschen wrote:
here is a simple test case showing the NoClassDefFoundError discussed in JDO-194.I does a Class.forName for foo.bar when there is a class foo.Bar. Attached you find a class Bar, please store it in a directory foo. Class Main executes the Class.forName. I tried jdk 1.4.2_10 and 1.5.0_05. Both result in a NoClassDefFoundError: foo/bar (wrong name: foo/Bar). You find the stacktraces attached.
