A DESCRIPTION OF THE REQUEST :
It is common for various subtle bugs in software, or configuration issues on certain machines, to cause a static initializer to fail, which produces a ExceptionInInitializerError. If this error is caught and logged to appropriate channels then the application developer or support person can easily track down the problem, and normally that is what happens.

However on occasion the ExceptionInInitializerError is swallowed due to buggy error handling code, which might be difficult or impossible to locate in a large modular application. If this happens, subsequent references to the problematic class throw a NoClassDefFoundError, yet omit any information about *why* the class could not be loaded; this information is apparently unreconstructible.

Related to JDK-4470034 and JDK-6747450 yet distinct from these.

JUSTIFICATION :
Crucial for field diagnosis of complex errors. I have personally encountered this problem on a number of occasions and spent a lot of time tracking down the root cause. (In the current case I am unable to find the original error at all, and the problem has disappeared after a JVM restart so cannot be reproduced.)

EXPECTED VERSUS ACTUAL BEHAVIOR :
EXPECTED -
When an ExceptionInInitializerError is thrown, this error ought to be saved in class metadata by the JVM, and used as a NoClassDefFoundError.cause if any subsequent attempts to load the class are made.
ACTUAL -
There is no cause in the NoClassDefFoundError, and the detail message gives little information beyond the name of the class and the implication that an ExceptionInInitializerError was involved.

---------- BEGIN SOURCE ----------
public class Demo {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        try {
            new X();
        } catch (LinkageError x) {
            // ignore
        }
        new X();
    }
    public static final class X {
        static {
            if (X.class != null) {
                throw new IllegalStateException("Oops!");
            }
        }
    }
}

on JDK 7u60 or 8u0 produces simply:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class Demo$X
at Demo.main(Demo.java:8)
---------- END SOURCE ----------

CUSTOMER SUBMITTED WORKAROUND :
None known, other than somehow tracking down the original ExceptionInInitializerError from some earlier log if it was ever recorded at all.