Installing Open Liberty beta releases

You can try out new Open Liberty features before they are officially released by installing one of the Open Liberty beta releases. The beta releases include all the features and capabilities from the most recent Open Liberty release, plus new and updated features that are currently in development.

Try out new features with Open Liberty beta releases

Open Liberty beta releases provide an opportunity to try out new features and capabilities before they are included in an official release. For example, features that are Jakarta EE 9 compatible are previewed in the Open Liberty beta releases before they are included in an official Open Liberty release. These features give developers an opportunity to try out Jakarta EE 9 and understand what might be required to move their workloads to a Jakarta EE 9 compatible runtime.

These releases also help the Open Liberty development team gather feedback from the user community about proposed updates. Feedback from the user community can help the development team understand when and whether to integrate an update from a beta into a production release. Beta releases are not intended for in-production use and some updates from the beta might not be included in a production release.

New beta releases are introduced as part of the regular Open Liberty four-week release cycle. Generally, the beta release becomes available on the same day as the current Open Liberty release. For example, the 21.0.0.3-beta release was introduced on the same day as the regular 21.0.0.2 release. This beta release contained some updates that were then added to the regular 21.0.0.3 release four weeks later.

For more information about the latest beta release, see the Open Liberty blog.

Install a beta features package

Open Liberty offers the All Beta Features and Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features packages, each of which includes everything from the most recent Open Liberty release. The All Beta Features package also includes all available beta features. The Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features package adds only the beta features that are included as part of Jakarta EE 9. You can install either beta features package by using Maven or Gradle build tools. Alternatively, .zip file downloads for each beta features package are available on the Get started page.

Install a beta features package with Maven

To install the All Beta Features package by using Maven, add the following runtimeArtifact element to the configuration element for the Liberty Maven plug-in in your pom.xml file:

<plugin>
    <groupId>io.openliberty.tools</groupId>
    <artifactId>liberty-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.3.4</version>
    <configuration>
        <runtimeArtifact>
          <groupId>io.openliberty.beta</groupId>
          <artifactId>openliberty-runtime</artifactId>
          <version>LATEST</version>
          <type>zip</type>
        </runtimeArtifact>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

This example installs the latest beta release that is available.

If you want to install the Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features package instead of the All Beta features package, set the artifactId element value under the runtimeArtifact element to openliberty-jakartaee9. For more information about the runtimeArtifact element, see the Archetypes section of the Liberty Maven plug-in documentation.

You must also add dependencies to your pom.xml file for the beta version of the APIs that are associated with the beta features that you want to try. For any beta features for APIs that are included in either the MicroProfile or Jakarta EE platforms, you can specify aggregate dependencies, as shown in the following example:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.eclipse.microprofile</groupId>
    <artifactId>microprofile</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.1</version>
    <type>pom</type>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>jakarta.platform</groupId>
    <artifactId>jakarta.jakartaee-api</artifactId>
    <version>9.0.0</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

These dependencies cover any feature that is backed by a MicroProfile or Jakarta EE platform API. For more information about what API packages are provided by an individual feature, see the documentation for the feature.

For more information about using Maven with Open Liberty, see the Building a web application with Maven guide and the Liberty Maven plug-in documentation.

Install a beta features package with Gradle

To install the All Beta Features package by using Gradle, add the following dependency to your build.gradle file:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime 'io.openliberty.beta:openliberty-runtime:+'
}

This example installs the latest beta release that is available.

Alternatively, to install the Jakarta EE 9 Beta Features package instead of the All Beta features package, add the following dependency to your build.gradle file:

dependencies {
    libertyRuntime 'io.openliberty.beta:openliberty-jakartaee9:+'
}

To specify aggregate dependencies for Jakarta EE 9 or MicroProfile platform APIs, add the following dependencies to your build.gradle file:

dependencies {
    providedCompile 'jakarta.platform:jakarta.jakartaee-api:9.0.0'
    providedCompile 'org.eclipse.microprofile:microprofile:4.0.1'
}

For more information about using Gradle with Open Liberty, see the Building a web application with Gradle guide and the Liberty Gradle plug-in documentation.

Enable beta features

After you install a beta features package and any necessary API dependencies, you can enable any beta feature by adding it to the featureManager element in your server.xml file. For more information about enabling and using Open Liberty features, see Feature overview.