Spring Tool Suite 3.9.14: New and Noteworthy

Important Note

This is a minor bugfix and maintenance release that we ship to our existing STS3 users beyond the announced maintenance lifespan for your convenience. We strongly recommend to update to the new Spring Tools 4. Here is a migration guide from Spring Tool Suite 3 to Spring Tools 4 that helps with migrating an existing workspace.

In case you are missing something extremely important or something is blocking you from upgrading, please raise an issue at: Spring Tools 4 GitHub issues.

Updates and New/Enhanced Features

Eclipse 2020-09 (4.17)

The default STS distribution is now based on the recently released Eclipse 2020-09 (4.17) release. Details about the Eclipse release can be found here: Eclipse 2020-09.

JDK11 required to run the IDE

The IDE now requires a JDK11 to run on as a minimum requirement. This does not affect projects in your workspace. They can still use and compile against any JDK that you configure in the preferences.

Please remember: the Quick Text Search now part of the Eclipse platform

The Quick Text Search feature got contributed to the Eclipse platform and ships now to all the millions of users of the Eclipse IDE. Therefore this will no longer be a separate feature installed into the Spring Tool Suite 3 distribution, but a default feature of the platform itself. We are pround of this contribution to the platform and welcoming all the new users to this amazing feature.

Important Changes and Fixes

new: this releases introduces a completely new wizard in Eclipse to add Spring Boot starter modules to existing projects. Take a look at the user guide section about it to learn all about this new and way more flexible way to add modules to your Spring Boot projects.
new: this releases introduces an experimental early version of support for the Spring Boot OCI image building support in combination with Docker. You can now use the Spring Boot Dashboard in Spring Tools 4 for Eclipse to create images and run them on docker, debug the app on Docker and use Spring Boot Devtools on Docker - and all this is just one click away. Check out the preliminary section about it in the user guide.
improvement: added action to jump from boot dashboard docker integration to docker explorer
improvement: added actions to pause an resume docker containers
improvement: deploy Java 11 based Spring apps to Cloud Foundry now easier via the boot dashboard
improvement: old Spring Boot launch configs are now "fixed" automatically to exclude test classes again
improvement: cursor is now set to the end of the filter text field after selecting a predefined search (fixed on macOS)
improvement: boot dashboards properties page for live data of cf-deployed apps now show better hint when live data is missing
change: local cloud services are now hidden by default and can be enabled via the boot dashboard view drop-down
change: outdated support for Buildship 2 removed
fixed: run spring boot app in debug mode in docker container now works with Spring Boot Devtools being enabled
fixed: add starters wizard now updates the projects definition automatically after pressing finish to get new resources into the right configuration automatically
fixed: improved a few icons for dark theme (#472)
fixed: wizard to grab Spring guide projects now shows errors that happen while downloading the projects in dialog title section
fixed: "software user agreement" refers to untraceable license (#484)

Miscellaneous

Useful Links

Download STS3: https://github.com/spring-projects/toolsuite-distribution/wiki/Spring-Tool-Suite-3

Spring Tools 3 Issue tracker: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-ide/issues

Known issues in this release

Deploying apps to Cloud Foundry via Boot Dashboard does not support new buildpacks attribute yet

The new buildpacks attribute in manifest.yml files is not yet supported when deploying apps via the Spring Boot dashboard within STS. A dialog will pop up and warn you about this limitation in case you run into this situation. As a workaround, you can push your apps via the CF CLI or continue to use the deprecated buildpack attribute.

Deleting Eureka service instances from Boot Dashboard

Deleting certain Eureka service instances, like p-service-registry in Pivotal Web Services, from boot dashboard Cloud Foundry targets may experience problems with timeouts. The same issue may be found when deleting them from Eclipse Tools for Cloud Foundry (CFT). A workaround is to use the cf CLI to delete these service instances.

Spring Boot dashboard ngrok tunneling feature doesn't support Spring Cloud Services yet

The Spring Boot Dashboards ngrok tunnel feature doesn't work yet with remote service registries from Spring Cloud Services. Instead it works with self-deployed Eureka service registry apps on CF only (as described here). We are working on enhancing the ngrok tunnel feature to directly support Spring Cloud Services in the near future. In the meantime we published a tech note that describes how to setup ngrok tunneling in combination with SCS manually.

Boot App launched with Thin Jar Launcher hangs during start up

Workaround is open launch configuration for the Boot App. Navigate to Spring Boot tab and enter a boot property into "Override Properties" table. For example server.port and value 8080. Save the launch configuration and re-launch your Boot App.

Setting the JDK

STS 3.9.14 requires a JDK11+ to run on top of. Nevertheless the native Eclipse launcher component might pick up a JRE or an older JDK automatically if you don't specify which JDK to run STS on top of. To avoid this, you can specify the JDK in the sts.ini file that comes with your STS installation. Add a line at the beginning "-vm" and an additional line below that which points to the "javaw" executable of the JDK on your machine. Here is a detailed explanation how to configure the JVM in the ini file.