Run a simple Cascading application in local mode
Just to provide a bit more detail: You can't mix local and hadoop classes in Cascading, as they assume different and incompatible environments. What's happening in your case is that you're trying to create a local flow with hadoop taps, the latter expecting a hadoop JobConf instead of the Properties object used to configure local taps.
Your code will work if you use cascading.tap.local.FileTap instead of cascading.tap.hadoop.Hfs.
Welcome to Cascading -
I just answered on the Cascading user list, but in brief the problem is a mix of local and Hadoop mode classes.. This code has LocalFlowConnector, but then uses Hfs taps.
When I revert back to the classes used in the "Impatient" tutorial, it run correctly: https://gist.github.com/3784194
Yes, you need to use LFS(Local File System) tap instead of HFS (Hadoop File System).
Also you can test your code using Junit test cases (with cascading-unittest jar) in local mode itself/ from eclipse.
http://www.cascading.org/2012/08/07/cascading-for-the-impatient-part-6/