Spring Boot Dev

Spring Boot Development

Use Arconia CLI to build, test, and run Spring Boot applications. Arconia CLI auto-detects Maven or Gradle — you never specify the build tool.

Run the application in development mode

arconia dev

This starts the app with the dev Spring profile active. If the project uses Arconia Dev Services, external services (databases, message brokers, AI inference servers, etc.) are provisioned automatically — no configuration needed.

Use --test (-t) only if the project relies on Spring Boot's native Testcontainers approach (a TestApplication class in src/test). If the project uses Arconia Dev Services, plain arconia dev is correct.

arconia dev --test

Build the application

arconia build

Options:

| Flag | Effect | |---|---| | --clean | Remove previous build output first | | --skip-tests | Skip tests during the build | | --native | Produce a GraalVM native executable instead of a JAR | | --offline | Build without network access |

Build a GraalVM native executable:

arconia build --native

Build output locations

| Build type | Gradle | Maven | |---|---|---| | JVM JAR | build/libs/ | target/ | | Native executable | build/native/nativeCompile/ | target/ |

Run tests

arconia test

Options:

| Flag | Effect | |---|---| | --clean | Clean before testing | | --native | Run tests in GraalVM native mode | | --offline | Test without network access |

Run a specific test class:

# Gradle
arconia test -- --tests "*BookServiceTests"

# Maven
arconia test -- -Dtest=BookServiceTests

If the project uses Arconia Dev Services, integration tests automatically get external services provisioned — no @Import annotations or configuration classes required.

Pass extra arguments to the build tool

Use -- to forward arguments to the underlying Maven or Gradle command:

arconia build -- --stacktrace
arconia test -- -DmyProperty=value
arconia dev -- -Dspring.profiles.active=staging

Workflow

1. Start the app: arconia dev
2. Make changes — the app live-reloads if Spring Boot DevTools is on the classpath
3. Run tests: arconia test
4. Build the final artifact: arconia build

Gotchas

• arconia build --native requires GraalVM to be installed. Native builds are

significantly slower than JVM builds but produce fast-startup, low-memory binaries.

• arconia dev without --test is the default and correct choice when the

project uses Arconia Dev Services. Only add --test for Spring Boot's native Testcontainers approach.

• All commands support --verbose (-v) for detailed output when debugging

build issues.

• The -- separator is required to distinguish Arconia CLI flags from build

tool arguments. Everything after -- is passed directly to Maven or Gradle.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: arconia-io
• Source: arconia-io/agent-skills
• License: Apache-2.0

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.