Bit of a stupid oopsie I had today that someone might appreciate.

We’re working on a microservice project in Spring Boot, running in a docker swarm. Past few days I get a Spring Cloud config server going in separate stack, create an overlay network, and get CI deployments to use the right profiles etc. It’s looking great, and the first component is working spectacularly.

Now just to do the other 6. Move config files to the Git repo, tweak CI, all the other faffing and hoohas; and deploy. Health checks keep failing, the containers are murdering themselves and resurrecting ad infinitum. They’re doing this so quickly that by the time I get the container ID to exec in and curl health, it’s no longer running. Cue frustration, increased caffeine and nicotine consumption; my sanity is slipping.

No errors in the logs, because from experience the Cloud Config errors ar at debug level. Whhhyyyy?? Some time later (way longer than it should have been) I realize I had never actually included the Spring Cloud Config starter. Boot 101, get your starter!
Since config client is just additional setup in properties.yml, there’s no issue of the dep isn’t there, it just doesn’t try to get the config.

The containers are still unhealthy, I can hear them screaming. But now at least it’s about something else...