Developer Tools for Eclipse Liberty Profile automatically add features

Question

Using IBM WebSphere Application Server Liberty Profile and Developer Tools for Eclipse plugin.

The plugin automatically adds needed features in the Server Configuration during deployment.

The first time deploying a given web application you are prompted to add the needed features and asked to remember this preference. Oops, clicked yes by mistake.

How can I stop the plugin from automatically adding features to my Server Configuration? (I have a user library and don't need the feature added to my server.)

Where is this preference stored?

Thanks

DeWayne

Answer 1

Right click on the project for your application in the project or enterprise explorer view and select Properties. Expand Liberty Profile and select Required Features. From here you can control the preferences for each required feature for the project.

Answer 2

Project > Properties > Liberty Profile > Required Features

I tried to control the preferences for required features but it did not work for me because "Required Features" was already empty. I am still looking for solution.

Answer 3

Had the same problem. For me Project -> Properties -> Liberty -> Required Features list was also empty.

• Eclipse Mars (4.5.2)
• Latest WAS Liberty (8.5.5.9) and its Liberty plugin (8.5.5090.v20160301_2318).

Found there was some RFE at IBM to provide a switch do disable automatic feature detection. See answer here: https://developer.ibm.com/answers/questions/175070/disable-auto-feature-detect-developer-tools-for-we/

A hacky workaround in the meantime: Go to your "WAS Liberty installation folder"/lib/features and move all the .MF files related to the feature you want to disable to some backup folder.

You might get some errors at startup, e.g.

CWWKF0001E: A feature definition could not be found for jpa-2.1

but otherwise it works.

EDIT: Eventually we chose to live with extra features added automatically. If the app is configured correctly and uses a parent-last (i.e. application-first) classloader, you should see no impact from extra features. At least we saw none in our case.