The WildFly community has released WildFly 31. This release delivers support for Jakarta MVC 2.1, a CLI tool, and WildFly Glow, a Maven plugin that analyzes subsystem usage and suggests a more lightweight runtime, such as running in Docker containers. WildFly 31 also introduces stability levels so users can choose features more carefully for different use cases. Other updates include upgrading MicroProfile 6.1, Hibernate 6.4.2, and JakartaEE 10. WildFly core now also supports JDK 21, the latest LTS version of the JDK.
According to Brian Stansberry, Sr. Principal Software Engineer at Red Hat, the journey to Glow started a couple of years ago by introducing Galleon, a provisioning tool enabling containerized deployments. Glow can scan the WAR file content and identify the required Galleon layers based on rulesets. e.g., jaxrs rule. WildFly Glow also detects, e.g., the data source being used and suggests the correct add-ons required. Once the identification process is complete, the correct Galleon layers are then selected. Furthermore, the Glow CLI enables users to provision a WildFly server, a bootable JAR or to produce a Docker container image that can run on orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
WildFly 31 implements the JakartaEE 10 Platform, the Web Profile, and the Core Profile. The Core Profile can run with the latest LTS of JDK 21, whereas the JakartaEE 10 and Core Profile can run with JDK 11 and 17. The recommended version to run WildFly 31 is JDK 17. WildFly 31 also implements most of the core MicroProfile specifications, having dropped support for MicroProfile Metrics in favor of Micrometer, rendering it incompatible with the MicroProfile specifications. The WildFly team has also shared the compatibility evidence for MicroProfile 6.1, which provides more details on the implemented specifications. Furthermore, this release also introduces two new quickstarts, Micrometer and MicroProfile LRA.
A new community feature allows users to export WildFly configuration so that any other instance of WildFly can be booted with it, thereby creating a configuration replica. Community features are part of the stability levels also introduced in this release. Stability levels (experimental, preview, community, default) give users more visibility into upcoming and experimental features and provide the ability to opt out of features.
The WildFly team also seems to have focused on more accessible learning options. All quickstarts are now deployable as ZIP files or bootable JARs. Where applicable, helm charts are used for deployment on Kubernetes derivatives like Red Hat OpenShift. Furthermore, the quickstarts also include tests such as smoke tests, the Getting Started maven archetype, the Get Started page, and user guides.
A detailed list of release notes is available on the WildFly release page.