Girders 6

Documentation

Documentation of Girders features for the latest release can be found here: https://netceteragroup.github.io/girders/

Modules

The following gives an overview of the main modules (or groups of modules) provided by Girders:

girders-platform-bom

Provides a curated list of Maven dependencies for all libraries used by Girders/Spring Boot. Most of the dependencies are imported from the io.spring.platform:platform-bom, org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-dependencies and org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-dependencies modules, while Girders extends that list with a few additional dependencies. Applications using Girders do not need to provide a version for any of these dependencies in their build configuration as Girders is managing those versions. When upgrading Girders itself, these dependencies will be upgraded as well in a consistent way. Plugin versions (but not configuration) are managed here if they are not solely used for the Girders build itself.

girders-parent

girders-autoconfigure, girders-libs and girders-starters inherit from girders-parent. Plugins which are only used for the Girders build are managed and configured here.

girders-autoconfigure

Girders extends the auto configuration capabilities provided by Spring Boot. This single module contains the code for all the auto configuration functionality provided by Girders. This module should contain optional dependencies to all libraries which are required for any of the features provided by Girders.

girders-starters

Starter modules are a set of convenient dependency descriptors that can be included in an application to enable a specific feature of Girders. Starter modules should not contain any code, but rather, they should depend on Girders library modules or other third party libraries. Starter modules should always depend on the girders-autoconfigure module.

girders-libs

Library modules contain the code for implementing the actual logic of the features provided by Girders. Library modules are introduced for consistency with Spring Boot dependencies to avoid having to include any code in the starter modules. Library modules rely on the dependency management provided by Girders/Spring Boot (by inheriting from girders-platform-bom) but they should not depend on starter modules (neither from Girders nor from Spring Boot) to make library modules usable independently from the extra functionality by starter modules and the auto configuration module.

Module Dependencies

The following diagram illustrates the dependency relationships between different types of modules for Girders and Spring Boot (the latter for a better understanding):

Demo Application

Girders comes with a demo application which showcases the main features provided by Girders. The demo application is packaged as an executable WAR with an embedded Tomcat server, which means that the resulting WAR can be executed in a standalone mode using java -jar girders-demo-showcase.war or deployed to a Java EE servlet container.

Standalone

To run the demo application in standalone mode in IntelliJ IDEA, do the following:

1. Run a Maven build for Girders (Build Simple).
2. Execute one of the Showcase runners to run the app.
3. Open the application in your browser: http://localhost:8080/demo-showcase/

Apache Tomcat

To deploy the demo application to a Tomcat Application Server in IntelliJ IDEA, do the following:

1. Configure a new Tomcat server in IntelliJ with the alias tomcat-girders (Apache Tomcat 8.5 or later).
2. Run a Maven build for Girders (Build Simple).
3. Execute the Tomcat run configuration girders-demos.
4. Open the application in your browser: http://localhost:8080/demo-showcase/

Note that the Tomcat run configuration girders-demos contains a VM parameter with a master password for the encrypted configuration properties (-Djasypt.encryptor.password=girders).

Maintenance

Release HOWTO

There is a dedicated (github actions) workflow for creating Girders releases and publishing them to the central maven repository.

To create a new release:

1. Go to the release workflow
2. Click on run workflow
3. Enter the release version (e.g. 6.1.0)
4. Enter the next snapshot version (e.g. 6.1.1-SNAPSHOT)
5. Click on Run workflow

The workflow will publish to the maven repository and create new release notes.

⚠️ It can take up to four hours until the published artifacts are visible.

After release verification

1. Make sure that the documentation was deployed in the latest version: https://netceteragroup.github.io/girders/
2. Check if the artifact is in the maven central repository: https://oss.sonatype.org/
3. Update the generated release notes: https://github.com/netceteragroup/girders/releases

Dependency updates

Dependabot is configured to automatically create (up to five) pull requests for dependency updates. For manual dependency updates, there are still the Intellij run configurations which use the versions-maven-plugin.