IntelliJ IDEA 2017.2 EAP: Run Dashboard for Spring Boot

Last week, we published a new IntelliJ IDEA 2017.2 EAP build, which, among various bugfixes and improvements, brings a new experimental feature, we think you may find very interesting. Because it’s still work in progress, you need to explicitly enable it via VM property -Dide.run.dashboard, or through the Registry.

After that, you will find that the traditional Run tool window for Spring Boot applications was replaced with the new Run Dashboard (in the future we plan that replacement for other app types, too.)

This new dashboard lets you explore and manage multiple Run configurations at once, with the list of Run configurations and their status on the left, and details and application-specific information on the right. Also, you get the toolbar, which is handy to issue commands like run, stop, or restart.

For example, Spring Boot applications display the recently introduced Endpoints tab:

If you prefer so, the new tool window can look exactly like the Run tool window. Just click the Show Configurations button on the left toolbar, and then use the tabs on top to switch between running applications:

We’re very excited about this new feature and believe that it can be applied not only to Spring Boot, but to many other types of applications (and maybe not only applications). This is why we’d like to ask you for your feedback. Please give this new feature a try and share with us both your impressions and improvement suggestions. We hope your feedback will help us better understand the possible usage scenarios and put them in IntelliJ IDEA 2017.2.