Are you one of the legacy Spring developers? Are you annoyed with the restarting of Spring Boot application every single time you make a small change in your java classes? I feel your pain bruh 😀 , but not anymore! 😉 Here is how to hot swap in spring boot application!
Spring Boot has released a magical dependency for all the developers called spring-boot-devtools
, as a part of Spring Boot 1.3.
I enables the developers to use much important features like live-reload (hot swap), remote debugging, etc.
Alright, lets talk about business! How to hot swap in spring boot application.
Step 1. spring-boot-devtools Dependency.
In case you didn’t select the spring-boot-devtools while creating your spring boot application, here is what you need to do.
Find the pom.xml
file in your maven project and add the dependency provided below in the <dependencies>
tag.
<dependency>
<groupid>org.springframework.boot</groupid>
<artifactid>spring-boot-devtools</artifactid>
</dependency>
If you’re using gradle, find the build.gradle
file in your project and add the below dependency.
developmentOnly 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-devtools'
Step 2. Enable Auto-build
Now we need to enable the feature that allows the reloading of the class by rebuilding the project and then hot-swapping it.
I order to do that, open the preferences of your IntelliJ and file the Build-Execution-Deployment in the sidebar. You will find Compiler on the top, click on that.
Check and enable the Build project automatically, as shown in the screen-grab below, and save the setting by clicking Apply.
![](https://thegeekyasian.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/intellij-spring-boot-hot-swap-preferences-1024x745.png)
Step 3. Enable Auto-make while Running
The last thing you need to do it enable auto-make while the application is running. You will have to do it by enabling a property in registry.
To open the registry, you need to press ctrl+shift+A if you’re a windows user. If you’re a mac user, press cmd+shift+A. In the search type ‘Registry’ and open it.
Once the registry is open on your screen, find this property called compiler.automake.allow.when.app.running
and enable it as shown in the screenshot below.
![](https://thegeekyasian.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/enable-compiler-automake-spring-boot-1024x731.png)
Step 4. Restart your IntelliJ
Yaasss! It’s done! Restart your IntelliJ now and you’ll be able to hot swap in Spring Boot Application while your application is running.
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