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 Liberty Maven or Gradle projects. 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
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. For the best experience, always use the latest available version of either plug-in.
Although you can run your Liberty applications on any supported Java SE version, Java 17 is required to run Liberty Tools in your IDE.
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 theinclude
element in theserver.xml
fileAny XML files that contain the server root element and exist in the
configDropins/overrides
,configDropins/defaults
,usr/shared/config
, orusr/servers
directory
MicroProfile APIs
Language support for MicroProfile 3.0 and later 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 filesDefinition and format support for MicroProfile properties in
microprofile-config.properties
filesOutline support (flat or tree view) in
microprofile-config.properties
filesCodeLens support for MicroProfile in Java files
Try it out
You can get Liberty Tools for your development environment directly from your vendor’s marketplace.
Liberty Tools for IntelliJ IDEA in the Jet Brains Marketplace
Liberty Tools for Visual Studio Code in the Visual Studio Code Marketplace
To learn more, check out the documentation for each project in GitHub.