Table of Contents

Adding Commit Info to your Micronaut Application

Expose the exact version of code that your application is running.

Authors: Sergio del Amo

Micronaut Version: 4.6.3

In this guide, we will add git commit info to your Micronaut build artifacts and running application. There are many benefits of keeping your commit info handy:

  • Commit info is encapsulated within the built artifacts

  • Fast authoritative means of identifying what specific code is running in an environment

  • This solution doesn’t rely on external tracking mechanisms

  • Transparency and reproducibility when investigating issues

1. Getting Started

In this guide, we will create a Micronaut application written in Java.

2. What you will need

To complete this guide, you will need the following:

3. Solution

We recommend that you follow the instructions in the next sections and create the application step by step. However, you can go right to the completed example.

Before running the downloaded project, follow the steps described in the Initialize Git Repository section below.

4. Writing the Application

Create an application using the Micronaut Command Line Interface or with Micronaut Launch.

mn create-app example.micronaut.micronautguide --build=maven --lang=java
If you don’t specify the --build argument, Gradle with the Kotlin DSL is used as the build tool.
If you don’t specify the --lang argument, Java is used as the language.
If you don’t specify the --test argument, JUnit is used for Java and Kotlin, and Spock is used for Groovy.

The previous command creates a Micronaut application with the default package example.micronaut in a directory named micronautguide.

Setup IntelliJ IDEA to develop Micronaut Applications.

5. Initialize Git Repository

The project aims to demonstrate how to provide Git commit information to the /info endpoint and in order for that to work the project needs to be in a Git repository. After creating the project, initialize a Git repository from the root of the newly created project:

cd micronautguide
git init
git add .
git commit -am "Initial project"

6. Management

Inspired by Spring Boot and Grails, the Micronaut management dependency adds support for monitoring of your application via endpoints: special URIs that return details about the health and state of your application.

To use the management features described in this section, add the dependency on your classpath.

pom.xml
<dependency>
    <groupId>io.micronaut</groupId>
    <artifactId>micronaut-management</artifactId>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

7. Info endpoint

The info endpoint returns static information from the state of the application. The info exposed can be provided by any number of "info sources".

Enable the info endpoint:

Since Micronaut Framework 4.0, to use YAML configuration, you have to add the YAML dependency.
src/main/resources/application.yml
endpoints:
  info:
    enabled: true
    sensitive: false

8. Maven Git Commit Id Plugin

If a git.properties file is available on the classpath, the GitInfoSource will expose the values in that file under the git key. Generation of a git.properties file will need to be configured as part of your build.

For example, you may choose to use the Maven Git Commit Id Plugin plugin. The plugin provides a goal named git-commit-id:revision responsible for the git.properties file generation. It is automatically invoked upon the execution of the classes goal. You can find the generated file in the directory target/classes.

Modify pom.xml file to add the plugin:

pom.xml
<properties>
   ...
   <gitCommitIdPlugin.version>4.0.5</gitCommitIdPlugin.version>
</properties>

...

<plugin>
    <groupId>pl.project13.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>git-commit-id-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>${gitCommitIdPlugin.version}</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>get-the-git-infos</id>
            <goals>
                <goal>revision</goal>
            </goals>
            <phase>compile</phase>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    <configuration>
        <generateGitPropertiesFile>true</generateGitPropertiesFile>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

9. Test

Create a JUnit test to verify that when you make a GET request to /info you get a payload such as:

{
  "git": {
    "dirty": "true",
    "commit": {
      "id": "7368906193527fbf2b45f1ed5b08c56631f5b155",
      "describe": "7368906-dirty",
      "time": "1527429126",
      "message": {
        "short": "Initial version",
        "full": "Initial version"
      },
      "user": {
        "name": "sdelamo",
        "email": "sergio.delamo@softamo.com"
      }
    },
    "branch": "master"
  }
}

Create a JUnit test to verify the behaviour:

src/test/java/example/micronaut/InfoTest.java
package example.micronaut;

import io.micronaut.http.HttpRequest;
import io.micronaut.http.HttpResponse;
import io.micronaut.http.client.HttpClient;
import io.micronaut.http.client.annotation.Client;
import io.micronaut.test.extensions.junit5.annotation.MicronautTest;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import jakarta.inject.Inject;
import java.util.Map;

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;
import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertNotNull;

@MicronautTest (1)
public class InfoTest {

    @Inject
    @Client("/")
    HttpClient client; (2)

    @Test
    public void testGitComitInfoAppearsInJson() {
        HttpRequest request = HttpRequest.GET("/info"); (3)

        HttpResponse<Map> rsp = client.toBlocking().exchange(request, Map.class);

        assertEquals(200, rsp.status().getCode());

        Map json = rsp.body(); (4)

        assertNotNull(json.get("git"));
        assertNotNull(((Map) json.get("git")).get("commit"));
        assertNotNull(((Map) ((Map) json.get("git")).get("commit")).get("message"));
        assertNotNull(((Map) ((Map) json.get("git")).get("commit")).get("time"));
        assertNotNull(((Map) ((Map) json.get("git")).get("commit")).get("id"));
        assertNotNull(((Map) ((Map) json.get("git")).get("commit")).get("user"));
        assertNotNull(((Map) json.get("git")).get("branch"));
    }
}
1 Annotate the class with @MicronautTest so the Micronaut framework will initialize the application context and the embedded server. More info.
2 Inject the HttpClient bean and point it to the embedded server.
3 Creating HTTP Requests is easy thanks to the Micronaut framework fluid API.
4 Use .body() to retrieve the parsed payload.

10. Testing the Application

To run the tests:

./mvnw test

11. Running the Application

To run the application, use the ./mvnw mn:run command, which starts the application on port 8080.

12. Generate a Micronaut Application Native Executable with GraalVM

We will use GraalVM, an advanced JDK with ahead-of-time Native Image compilation, to generate a native executable of this Micronaut application.

Compiling Micronaut applications ahead of time with GraalVM significantly improves startup time and reduces the memory footprint of JVM-based applications.

Only Java and Kotlin projects support using GraalVM’s native-image tool. Groovy relies heavily on reflection, which is only partially supported by GraalVM.

12.1. GraalVM Installation

The easiest way to install GraalVM on Linux or Mac is to use SDKMan.io.

Java 21
sdk install java 21.0.5-graal

For installation on Windows, or for a manual installation on Linux or Mac, see the GraalVM Getting Started documentation.

The previous command installs Oracle GraalVM, which is free to use in production and free to redistribute, at no cost, under the GraalVM Free Terms and Conditions.

Alternatively, you can use the GraalVM Community Edition:

Java 21
sdk install java 21.0.2-graalce

12.2. Native Executable Generation

To generate a native executable using Maven, run:

./mvnw package -Dpackaging=native-image

The native executable is created in the target directory and can be run with target/micronautguide.

It is possible to customize the name of the native executable or pass additional build arguments using the Maven plugin for GraalVM Native Image building. Declare the plugin as following:

pom.xml
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.graalvm.buildtools</groupId>
    <artifactId>native-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>0.10.3</version>
    <configuration>
        <!-- <1> -->
        <imageName>mn-graalvm-application</imageName> (1)
        <buildArgs>
              <!-- <2> -->
          <buildArg>-Ob</buildArg>
        </buildArgs>
    </configuration>
</plugin>
1 The native executable name will now be mn-graalvm-application.
2 It is possible to pass extra build arguments to native-image. For example, -Ob enables the quick build mode.

Annotate the Application class with @Introspected. This won’t be necessary in a real world application because there will be Micronaut beans defined (something annotated with @Singleton, @Controller,…​), but for this case we need to annotate a class so the visitor that generates the GraalVM resource-config.json file is triggered:

src/main/java/example/micronaut/Application.java
package example.micronaut;

import io.micronaut.core.annotation.Introspected;
import io.micronaut.runtime.Micronaut;

@Introspected
public class Application {

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

The git.properties file that is generated by the gradle-git-properties plugin will not be accessible from the native executable unless access to the file is configured in resource-config.json:

src/main/resources/META-INF/native-image/resource-config.json
{
  "resources": [
    {"pattern":"\\Qgit.properties\\E"}
  ]
}

You can execute the info endpoint exposed by the native executable:

curl localhost:8080/info
{"git":{"dirty":"true","total":{"commit":{"count":"45"}},"build":{"host":"Sergios-iMac-Pro.local","time":"2019-12-09T09:35:30+0100","user":{"name":"Sergio del Amo","email":"sergio.delamo@softamo.com"},"version":"0.1"},"commit":{"time":"2019-12-09T09:30:41+0100","id":"af3cff433d247fd4c2d8c54ae200108e98adfb2a","message":{"short":"add help section","full":"add help section\n"},"user":{"name":"Sergio del Amo","email":"sergio.delamo@softamo.com"}},"remote":{"origin":{"url":"git@github.com:micronaut-guides/adding-commit-info.git"}},"branch":"master"}}

13. Next Steps

Explore more features with Micronaut Guides.

14. Help with the Micronaut Framework

The Micronaut Foundation sponsored the creation of this Guide. A variety of consulting and support services are available.

15. License

All guides are released with an Apache license 2.0 license for the code and a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license for the writing and media (images…​).