I agree with @ccsevers. Cascading doesn't yet support hadoop 2.0, and by extension not 0.23.9 either. Again, 2.x.x and 0.23.9 are quite similar in this regard. I wasn't arguing for replacing 0.23.9 with 2.x.x. I was wondering why hadoop-common is needed.

Why was hadoop-common needed? What class did you need it from? Thanks!