How do I create a Spring Boot Starter Project in Eclipse that is properly configured with a Run Configuration?

Question

I followed the instructions in Spring Boot Support in Spring Tool Suite 3.6.4 and ended up with an Eclipse project which has several issues. The number one issue is that when I right-click on the class containing the "main" entry method and select the "Run As" option, the only entry I get is the fallback "Run Configurations..." method. I neither get the option to run it as a "Spring Boot App" or as a "Java Application".

My question is how do I create the project or what do I do after it's created following the instructions in that site to get that Run As option?

In addition to the above information, I should add the following:

• I'm using Eclipse 4.4.2 (Luna SR2) and STS 3.7.1
• I've tried it on both Windows and Linux (Fedora with OpenJDK)
• Used Java 8 (Sun Hotspot 64-bit 1.8.0_65)

• When the pom.xml initially gets created, it has an error apparently due to a missing config the m2e wants for which I needed to add the following:

  <pluginManagement>
      <plugins>
          <plugin>
              <groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
              <artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
              <version>1.0.0</version>
              <configuration>
                  <lifecycleMappingMetadata>
                      <pluginExecutions>
                          <pluginExecution>
                              <pluginExecutionFilter>
                                  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                                  <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                                  <versionRange>[3.1,)</versionRange>
                                  <goals>
                                      <goal>compile</goal>
                                      <goal>testCompile</goal>
                                  </goals>
                              </pluginExecutionFilter>
                              <action>
                                  <ignore />
                              </action>
                          </pluginExecution>
                      </pluginExecutions>
                  </lifecycleMappingMetadata>
              </configuration>
          </plugin>
      </plugins>
  </pluginManagement>
  

• It doesn't look like the Eclise project is properly configured for a Java application either. There's no configuration for a Java src tree. Below is the .project file:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <projectDescription>
          <name>demo</name>
          <comment></comment>
          <projects>
          </projects>
          <buildSpec>
                  <buildCommand>
                          <name>org.eclipse.m2e.core.maven2Builder</name>
                          <arguments>
                          </arguments>
                  </buildCommand>
          </buildSpec>
          <natures>
                  <nature>org.eclipse.m2e.core.maven2Nature</nature>
          </natures>
  </projectDescription>
  

• I can manually run the app as per How to run Spring Boot web application in Eclipse itself? (by executing [Project] --> Run As --> Maven Build... --> Goal: spring-boot:run

Answer 1

To create a new spring-boot project in sts just click new spring-starter project, that will create the project for you. New->Project->Spring->Spring starter project

You'll run throught the wizard select 'Web' checkbox to have the web app selected this will create an application class like this

@SpringBootApplication
public class DemoApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);
    }
}

My auto generated POM

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>demo</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>demo</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.7.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>


</project>