Auto-wiring a List using util schema gives NoSuchBeanDefinitionException

This is due to a rather obscure part of @Autowired’s behaviour, specified in 3.11.2. @Autowired:

It is also possible to provide all
beans of a particular type from the
ApplicationContext by adding the
annotation to a field or method that
expects an array of that type…

The same applies for typed collections…

In other words, by saying @Autowired @Qualifier("myList") List<String>, you’re actually asking for “give me the list of all beans of type java.lang.String that have the qualifier “myList”.

The solution is mentioned in 3.11.3. Fine-tuning annotation-based autowiring with qualifiers:

If you intend to express
annotation-driven injection by name,
do not primarily use @Autowired – even
if is technically capable of referring
to a bean name through @Qualifier
values. Instead, prefer the JSR-250
@Resource annotation which is
semantically defined to identify a
specific target component by its
unique name, with the declared type
being irrelevant for the matching
process.

As a specific consequence of this
semantic difference, beans which are
themselves defined as a collection or
map type cannot be injected via
@Autowired since type matching is not
properly applicable to them. Use
@Resource for such beans, referring to
the specific collection/map bean by
unique name.

So use this in your test, and it works fine:

@Resource(name="myList") private List<String> stringList;