Develop with Liberty Tools

Liberty Tools are intuitive developer tools for the Eclipse IDE, Visual Studio Code, and IntelliJ IDEA development environments. These tools enable fast iterative development with Liberty dev mode and Maven or Gradle.

Liberty Tools automatically detect any projects that specify the Liberty Maven plug-in or the Liberty Gradle plug-in in the project pom.xml or build.gradle file. These projects are added to a special Liberty dashboard view in Eclipse IDE or Visual Studio Code, or to the Liberty tool window in IntelliJ IDEA. From there, you can access a command menu to manage your projects.

Liberty Tools also provide helpful language-support features such as code completion, hover descriptions, and configuration diagnostics for MicroProfile API, Jakarta EE API, and Liberty configuration and Java files.

Minimum requirements

Liberty Tools are currently available as an early release on all supported environments.

To use Liberty Tools with dev mode, your project must specify the Liberty Maven plug-in or the Liberty Gradle plug-in in the project pom.xml or build.gradle file. A minimum level of 3.7.1 for the Liberty Maven plug-in or 3.5.1 for the Liberty Gradle plug-in is recommended.

Develop, test, and debug in your editor

Use Liberty Tools to stop, start, or interact with Liberty dev mode from the Liberty dashboard in Eclipse IDE or Visual Studio Code or the Liberty tool window in IntelliJ IDEA. Liberty dev mode automatically detects, recompiles, and deploys code changes whenever you save a new change. It also runs unit and integration tests on demand and can attach a debugger to the running server to step through your code at any time. Liberty Tools bring these dev mode features directly into the command menu for the Liberty projects in your editor. With just a few clicks, you can start and stop your Liberty application, run tests, and view test reports.

Write code with editing support for Liberty configuration, MicroProfile, and Jakarta EE

Liberty Tools help you quickly and easily edit your application and configuration files by providing language support features for MicroProfile, Jakarta EE, and Liberty configuration and Java files.

Liberty configuration files

The following language support features are available for select Liberty configuration files.

  • Code completion: start typing a Liberty property, variable, or XML configuration to view a list of possible options.

  • Hover support: hover your cursor over Liberty properties, variables, or XML configuration to view a description.

  • Configuration diagnostics: spot potential problems in your configuration, such as invalid values.

These features are available for the following Liberty configuration files.

  • server.env

  • bootstrap.properties

  • server.xml and any XML files that are referenced through the include element in the server.xml file

  • Any XML files that contain the server root element and exist in the configDropins/overrides, configDropins/defaults, usr/shared/config, or usr/servers directory

MicroProfile APIs

Language support for MicroProfile 3.0 and 4.0 APIs includes the following features.

  • Completion, hover, validation, and quick fix support for MicroProfile properties in microprofile-config.properties files and for MicroProfile code in Java files

  • Definition and format support for MicroProfile properties in microprofile-config.properties files

  • Outline support (flat or tree view) in microprofile-config.properties files

  • CodeLens support for MicroProfile in Java files

Jakarta EE APIs

Language support for the Jakarta EE API 9.x includes the following features for select Jakarta EE APIs that are found in Java files on a project’s class path.

  • Code completion

  • Diagnostics

  • Quick fixes

Try it out

You can get an early release of Liberty Tools for your development environment directly from your vendor’s marketplace.

To learn more, check out the documentation for each project in GitHub.