Spring Tools 4 for Eclipse info about running app

Question

I am new to Spring and trying to understand a few things. In spring docs read about spring tools and thought to give it a try.

I installed Spring Tools 4.9.0 from Eclipse Marketplace and use it to import a tutorial project (File > New > Other > Import Spring Getting Started Context). Run the app with Boot Dashboard and it works as it should.

Saw in some tutorial videos when the app runs annotations become greenish and if you hover over them you get info like bean id etc. In my case nothing like that happens. Do i need to configure something in eclipse or am i missing something else?

Thanks in advance.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65940278/spring-tools-4-for-eclipse-info-about-running-app

Answer 1

The feature you are referring to is the "Live Application Information", the user guide section for this is here: https://github.com/spring-projects/sts4/wiki/Live-Application-Information.

In order to have an app showing that live information in the tools, it has to have the spring boot actuators on the classpath: https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/production-ready-features.html.

Depending on the exact guide that you chose it might not have actuators on the classpath out-of-the-box. In that case, add the actuator dependency to your pom.xml file, do a "Maven -> Update Project" from the context menu and start the app again using the dashboard. Then the green live information highlights should appear.