How do I generate build-info.properties in the IntelliJ "out" directory on debug/run for a Spring Boot project?

Question

In my build.gradle, I have added spring build info:

springBoot {
    mainClass = "${springBootMainClass}"

    buildInfo() {
        additionalProperties = [
                name: "${appName}",
                version: "${version}-${buildNumber}",
                time: buildTime()
        ]
    }
}

def buildTime() {
    final dateFormat = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ")
    dateFormat.timeZone = TimeZone.getTimeZone('GMT')
    dateFormat.format(new Date())
}

When I run from the command line, this correctly adds the /META-INF/build-info.properties file into /build/resources/main so that the "/info" endpoint shows the build information in JSON.

When I run from IntelliJ's run/debug button, IntelliJ does not use the /build directory but instead uses the /out directory and also does not run that gradle task, so the /info endpoint has empty JSON.

How can I make it generate that file and put it in the /out directory?

Answer 1

Enable Delegate IDE build/run actions to Gradle option in Settings (Preferences) | Build, Execution, Deployment | Build Tools | Gradle | Runner tab.

In latest IDE versions set Gradle for the Settings (Preferences on macOS) | Build, Execution, Deployment | Build Tools | Gradle | Build and run using option.

Answer 2

I have exactly the same need, and I don't want to use "delegate IDE build/run action to Gradle" for different (good) reasons.

In my case I don't need that file /META-INF/build-info.properties to be up-to-date in IDEA during develop phase, I just need this file to be available in the "run" classpath (under /out/...), else Spring won't be able to create and inject the BuildProperties bean when launching my app from IDEA run/debug tool.

So here is a simple solution if your are also in my case:

1. create a dummy "dev" (or "snapshot") version of the build-info.properties in the main resources directory ( src/main/resources/META-INF/build-info.properties )

   #DO NOT EDIT (will be overriden by Spring boot plugin ) build.time=2019-05-07T11:32:31.581Z build.artifact=myapp build.group=org.mycompany build.name=myapp build.version=dev

This dev version will be automatically copied into IDEA /out/production/resources directory when building project from IDEA

2. Create a task dependency between bootBuildInfo task and processResources tasks, to make sure that Spring boot plugin will override the "dev" version with up-to-date version when building the app jar:

   bootBuildInfo.mustRunAfter processResources

This way, SpringBoot gradle plugin will override the file copied from sources by processResources task, with its auto-generated up-to-date file.

EDIT 2020-10

As Dmitry warned in comment below, this solution will break Gradle incremental build, as both processResources and bootBuildInfo tasks share the same output file build-info.properties. To avoid that, we can add exclusion in the processResources to filter out this file, when we detect that tasks graph contains bootBuildInfo tasks

project.gradle.taskGraph.whenReady {
    if (it.allTasks.any {it.name == "bootBuildInfo"}) {
        processResources {
            exclude("META-INF/build-info.properties")
        }
    }
}