Spring Tool Suite & Groovy/Grails Tool Suite 3.4.0: New and Noteworthy

General Updates

Updated to Eclipse Kepler SR1

The main distributions are now based on the latest Eclipse Kelper SR1 release.

Easy and quick Stop and Restart

A 'Stop' and 'Restart' button have been added to the Eclipse 'Launching' toolbar. Just clicking the button applies to the last process you started. Alternatively, select a specific process from the pulldown.

Pivotal tc Server Developer Edition updated to 2.9.3

STS and GGTS now ship with the latest Pivotal tc Server Developer Edition 2.9.3.

Grails updated to 2.2.4

GGTS now ships with Grails 2.2.4.

Spring Tooling updates

New Dashboard

The distributions ship with a completely renewed dashboard. This new dashboard is designed and implemented to provide easier navigation, a better browsing experience and more direct access to the new getting started content on https://spring.io/.

If you don't like the new dashboard. You can still revert to the old dahsboard via the Dashboard Preferences page.

Please also tell us why you don't like the new dashboard by posting on the STS Forum. Eventually we will remove the old dashboard. Your feedback will help us to make sure the new dashboard is an adequate replacement.

Support for new Getting Started Guides

The dashboard welcome page provides links to useful resources on the spring website. The 'Browse Guides' link takes you to an index of Getting Started Guides on the spring.io website. The typical guide will come with sample code that can easily be imported into STS via the 'Getting Started Content' import wizard. The wizard can be opened in several ways.

• Via the "Import Guide" button on the dashboard.
• Via the "File >> Import Menu" find the "Getting Started Content" wizard in the "Spring" Category.

Use the wizard to search getting started content by keyword, then pick a guide of your choice. You can import the code associated with the guide into the workspace as either Gradle or Maven projects. The tutorial content of the guide will open in a web browser.

New Spring Starter Project Wizard

This wizard creates a Spring Boot enabled project. Open the wizard from the menu "File >> New >> Spring Starter Project". Select some Spring Boot Starters and an app with the desired classpath elements is created. Spring Boot does the rest, configuring suitable defaults for your Spring app based on what's on the classpath.

Automatic detection for JavaConfig classes

STS 3.4.0 can now automatically detect Java types annotated with @Configuration, @Component, @Bean, @Import or @EnableAutoConfiguration and automatically add them to the Spring model as JavaConfigs. This setting can be enabled in the project properties:

Basic support of Groovy for Spring apps

STS 3.4.0 will treat annotated Groovy Config classes as though they were Java Config classes and add them to the Spring model:

Java8

Easy access to Eclipse Java 8 support (currently in beta)

The eclipse team are working hard on Java8 support and many of the proposed language features are already supported. The STS team is now building the beta versions of this support into an update site. The Java 8 support can be installed via the usual route (dashboard extensions page) or using the regular eclipse update site mechanism and this URL:

https://dist.springsource.com/snapshot/TOOLS/java8/e43

There are also complete distributions created nightly containing the Java8 feature, see the second group of downloads available here:

https://dist.springsource.com/snapshot/STS/nightly-distributions.html

With the features installed it is then possible to set a project compatibility level to 1.8 and start to explore the new language constructs. Be aware that it is important to run code compiled via this route against a compatible level of JDK8. b97 works well but can be tricky to get hold of. With b105 there are currently problems with running code using lambdas. If in any doubt what to use, ask on the tools forum, the situation changes daily (the update site is rebuilt every evening to include the latest changes).

Note: Currently this will not install into GGTS. The Java8 support is currently shipped as a feature patch for the compiler. Groovy-Eclipse also includes a feature patch for the compiler. They cannot both be installed at the same time.

Cloud Foundry Integration for Eclipse 1.5.1

1.5.1 introduces 3 new features that expand on the v2 Cloud Foundry server support added in 1.5.0.

Buildpacks

Buildpacks can now be specified when pushing an application to a Cloud Foundry server. When the deployment wizard opens after dragging and dropping an application to a Cloud Foundry server instance, the first page allows users to enter a URL to a buildpack (e.g. https://github.com/cloudfoundry/java-buildpack).

Clone Server to Target Space

It is now easier to clone an existing Cloud Foundry server instance to target another space. In either the Cloud Foundry editor "Overview" tab, or Servers View context menu, select "Clone Server". This will open a wizard that allows a user to create a new server instance to another organization or space without having to go through the New Server Wizard again.

Multiple Domains

When deploying an application, or editing the application's mapped URLs, the URL UI has been enhanced to show the host and domain components of the application's URL. A user can now select other available domains from a combo control.