Make excludeDevtools available as a user property in Maven (spring-boot-maven-plugin)

[jvwilge]

I'd like to be able to set the excludeDevtools as a user property (for spring-boot-maven-plugin) on the command line when building my project in Maven :

mvn clean verify -Dspring-boot.excludeDevtools=false

Right now you have to add a configuration entry <excludeDevtools>false</excludeDevtools>
to your pom.xml. This is code that you don't want to end up in your production code. When you add it via the command line the pom is kept clean.

I tried to create a pull request, but ran into trouble with our corporate Nexus and snapshot/milestones. I think the fix is quite easy (but wasn't able to verify it).

How to implement the fix

In spring-boot-tools/spring-boot-maven-plugin/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/maven/RepackageMojo.java#189 (the line before private boolean excludeDevtools = true; should be replaced with :

@Parameter(property = "spring-boot.excludeDevtools", defaultValue = "true")

I think the docs are auto-generated, but when they're not the user property has to be added to it.

I kept the property name in line with ones used in the other exclude properties

It would be nice if it could also be backported to version 2.1.x

Verify the fix

To verify the fix works create a sample project on https://start.spring.io/ with all the default settings.

In pom.xml add

    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
      <optional>true</optional>
    </dependency>

to the <dependencies> section.

Build the project with

mvn clean package -Dspring-boot.excludeDevtools=false

Run

jar tf target/demo-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar | grep dev

and you should see an entry like BOOT-INF/lib/spring-boot-devtools-2.1.4.RELEASE.jar

Thanks!

[snicoll]

@jvwilge I am not really against adding a property but that looks a bit unusual to me and you can achieve the same thing by creating a property of your own that you can handle the exact same way. Can you share why that route didn't work for you?

[jvwilge]

Thanks for the quick reply! I hadn't thought of adding a placeholder:

<excludeDevtools>${spring-boot.excludeDevtools}</excludeDevtools>

This behaves the same as my 'fix'

I had some problems adding the spring repo's to our Nexus. I gave up after spring-data-releasetrain couldn't be found. Right now I'm at home and things go a lot smoother, I think it has to do with an incorrect mirror configuration on our side of some milestone libs.

update 2-may-19@08:44 : the problem was that our mirror of central had the tag <mirrorOf>central</mirrorOf> and I forgot to add the spring snapshot repo's to the projects where I was using the freshly built snapshots.

So I have a nice solution for my problem, it would make our poms a bit cleaner if the property is added anyway. I can imagine other people might use it too, so it's more of a nice to have now.

[snicoll]

This behaves the same as my 'fix'

I wouldn't use a project placeholder with the same prefix as a plugin you don't control. Please use something specific to your project/company instead.

I've flagged this one for team attention to see what the rest of the team thinks.

[jvwilge]

Good point, I'll replace it!

Thanks for your help. I'll keep an eye on this issue.

[snicoll]

Duplicate of #16701