I just checked out the API page http://server/job/TEST-START/api/?, and clicked on the link in the Similarly, this URL can be used to get and set just the job description. POST form data with a "description" parameter to set the description. section, ie http://server/job/TEST-START/description. As the description is empty (newly created project), i would expect an empty page and not a NPE.
This is the NullPointerException I got:
<html><head><title>Error 500</title></head><body bgcolor="#ffffff"><h1>Status Code: 500</h1>Exception: <br>Stacktrace: <pre>java.lang.NullPointerException
at java.io.PrintWriter.write(PrintWriter.java:429)
at hudson.model.Job.doDescription(Job.java:1011)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Function$InstanceFunction.invoke(Function.java:282)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Function.bindAndInvoke(Function.java:149)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Function.bindAndInvokeAndServeResponse(Function.java:88)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.MetaClass$1.doDispatch(MetaClass.java:103)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.NameBasedDispatcher.dispatch(NameBasedDispatcher.java:53)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.tryInvoke(Stapler.java:561)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:646)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.MetaClass$6.doDispatch(MetaClass.java:233)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.NameBasedDispatcher.dispatch(NameBasedDispatcher.java:53)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.tryInvoke(Stapler.java:561)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:646)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.invoke(Stapler.java:477)
at org.kohsuke.stapler.Stapler.service(Stapler.java:159)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:45)
at winstone.ServletConfiguration.execute(ServletConfiguration.java:249)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.forward(RequestDispatcher.java:335)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:378)
at hudson.util.PluginServletFilter$1.doFilter(PluginServletFilter.java:94)
at hudson.util.PluginServletFilter.doFilter(PluginServletFilter.java:86)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:195)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:368)
at hudson.security.csrf.CrumbFilter.doFilter(CrumbFilter.java:47)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:195)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:368)
at hudson.security.ChainedServletFilter$1.doFilter(ChainedServletFilter.java:84)
at hudson.security.ChainedServletFilter.doFilter(ChainedServletFilter.java:76)
at hudson.security.HudsonFilter.doFilter(HudsonFilter.java:164)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:195)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:368)
at hudson.util.CharacterEncodingFilter.doFilter(CharacterEncodingFilter.java:81)
at winstone.FilterConfiguration.execute(FilterConfiguration.java:195)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.doFilter(RequestDispatcher.java:368)
at winstone.RequestDispatcher.forward(RequestDispatcher.java:333)
at winstone.RequestHandlerThread.processRequest(RequestHandlerThread.java:244)
at winstone.RequestHandlerThread.run(RequestHandlerThread.java:150)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
</pre><br><hr size="1" width="90%"><i>Generated by Winstone Servlet Engine v0.9.10 at Fri Jul 01 07:33:51 CEST 2011</i></body></html>