Spring Dev Tools vs JRebel

calendar Oct 8, 2023 · 1 min read  automation en /  · spring spring-boot  ·
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There is very handy feature of SpringBoot which is called Dev tools. Dev tools enable hot reloading of spring-boot- based application every time your IDE recompile the code.

Because Spring Boot is often used with Microservices in mind, the reload is quick, and quite seamless.

I did not understand why so little developer use it in my project in the day by day: I think is one of the compelling reason to use spring-boot instead of other libraries.

Also there is a maven integration so I just issue

mvn test spring-boot:run

and I let my VSCode/Eclipse/IntelliJ IDE to recompile the code for me.

My paste experience with JRebel was not so good: partially because it was still linked to a WebLogic application server bringing down the whole development experience, and partially because I discovered JRebel will slow down the entire Eclipse IDE, so when removed, my loss of productivity was balanced by the regained speed... but it was over 9 years ago...anyway its license cost is a lot more than a IntelliJ full license, so I still have doubts about its cost/quality ratio.