How do I prevent Maven's spring-boot plugin from copying static resources to target?

Question

I recently updated the OS on my laptop (Linux Mint 17.1 => 17.3) and now when I run my project with

mvn spring-boot:run

static resources are copied to the target folder, essentially caching them. Thus I have to completely bounce the server to see changes made to the static resources reflected in the browser.

This was not the case before I updated my laptop. I have also found that it is exclusive to this project, other spring-boot projects are not affected.

I also cannot get static resources to update when running in eclipse, both in normal and debug mode.

Some additional information:

Java version: 1.7
Spring-boot version: 1.3.2
spring-boot maven plugin version: 1.3.2
Maven version: 3.3.9

Any ideas?

Reviel

Did you just upgrade to Boot 1.3? You should look at the new dev tools and related changes. – Guam

Answer 1

Explicitly setting the addResources config item in the spring-boot maven plugin seems to fix this. The plugin declaration in your pom file will look like this:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <addResources>true</addResources>
    </configuration>        
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>repackage</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Interestingly, adding the spring-boot-devtools dependency doesn't not fix this, despite the documentation specifically mentioning it would do the same thing as the addResources config item.

Reviel

This works when running on the command line with mvn spring-boot:run but IntelliJ will not pick up changes with this option when using a Spring Boot configuration. Executing Make Module will reload the changes but this is not ideal. – Guidotti

I use eclipse, but I believe this is possible with IntelliJ as well. You can create a maven run configuration that uses the spring-boot:run goal. This also allows you to use your IDE's debugging tools and keep the benefits of spring-boot:run.. – Reviel

Yes, I used this approach too. There is a better solution given here which makes IntelliJ auto-reload the resources – Guidotti