Since switching to maven for the project classpath, junit does not work in myeclipse 6.5 for me.

It appears that there is a dependency on an older log4j version. My own poms reference a log4j that have the trace field, so I am wondering what is causing this ...

The exception is :

junit.framework.AssertionFailedError: Exception in constructor: testSave (java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: TRACE
at org.slf4j.impl.Log4jLoggerAdapter.log(Log4jLoggerAdapter.java:492)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SLF4JLocationAwareLog.trace(SLF4JLocationAwareLog.java:78)
at org.springframework.core.CollectionFactory.createLinkedSetIfPossible(CollectionFactory.java:90)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.<init>(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:85)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.<init>(AbstractBeanFactory.java:142)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.<init>(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:133)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.<init>(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:144)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.<init>(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:100)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.createBeanFactory(AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.java:144)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.refreshBeanFactory(AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.java:99)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.obtainFreshBeanFactory(AbstractApplicationContext.java:394)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:324)
at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:122)
at org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.<init>(ClassPathXmlApplicationContext.java:76)
at edu.mit.academic.pe.dao.hibernate.HibernateProgramYearDAOTest.<init>(HibernateProgramYearDAOTest.java:38)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:274)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.createTest(TestSuite.java:131)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.addTestMethod(TestSuite.java:114)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.<init>(TestSuite.java:75)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.junit3.JUnit3TestLoader.getTest(JUnit3TestLoader.java:102)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.junit3.JUnit3TestLoader.loadTests(JUnit3TestLoader.java:59)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:445)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:673)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:386)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196)
)
at junit.framework.Assert.fail(Assert.java:47)
at junit.framework.TestSuite$1.runTest(TestSuite.java:263)
at junit.framework.TestCase.runBare(TestCase.java:127)
at junit.framework.TestResult$1.protect(TestResult.java:106)
at junit.framework.TestResult.runProtected(TestResult.java:124)
at junit.framework.TestResult.run(TestResult.java:109)
at junit.framework.TestCase.run(TestCase.java:118)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.runTest(TestSuite.java:208)
at junit.framework.TestSuite.run(TestSuite.java:203)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.junit3.JUnit3TestReference.run(JUnit3TestReference.java:130)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.TestExecution.run(TestExecution.java:38)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:460)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.runTests(RemoteTestRunner.java:673)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.run(RemoteTestRunner.java:386)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.junit.runner.RemoteTestRunner.main(RemoteTestRunner.java:196)

This is an interesting issue, but I wonder if the JUnit version is a red-herring? The reason I say that is your stack trace looks like:

JUnit calls into your Hibernate DAO, your Hibernate DAO is called by Spring, Spring tries to use the Commons-Logging SLF4J impl, which is trying to use Log4J and the whole thing dies.

If this project used to work in a non-Maven project, the trick is just checking the JAR versions you had before, and specifying those exact same dependencies for Maven, it will resolve them and you'll get things working again.