Spring Boot Template Engine Hot Deployment Techniques

Spring Boot template engines (Thymeleaf, FreeMarker, Groovy, Velocity) cache pages by default, which prevents seeing changes without restarting.

To enable hot deployment, you can disable the cache via properties such as spring.thymeleaf.cache=false , spring.freemarker.cache=false , spring.groovy.template.cache=false , and spring.velocity.cache=false .

Another approach is to run the application in Debug mode, which allows quick hot deployment but cannot handle changes to configuration files or method signatures.

Adding the spring-boot-devtools dependency provides broader hot‑deployment support, automatically disables template caching, and restarts the application on file changes.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
</dependency>

Using the Spring Loaded library enables hot deployment without Debug mode by attaching the library at runtime.

JRebel offers comprehensive hot‑deployment for Java and Spring Boot, but it is a commercial tool with a 14‑day trial.

Reference: http://suo.im/5O4CrI