Packaged Server option not available in Eclipse with Bluemix and Liberty plugin

Question

I'm trying to customize the Liberty setup, following the instructions from this post:
"Custom Liberty server.xml configurations in IBM Bluemix", see: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/bluemix/2015/01/modify-liberty-server-xml-configurations-ibm-bluemix/

In order to modify the Liberty server features, I'd like to replace the automatic generation of the configuration file by a customized server configuration, which according to the instructions is called "Liberty packaging server".

In the Eclipse Neon IDE, I've already installed two plugin's, the Bluemix Tool as well as the Liberty Development Plugin. At the server tab, I'm right clicking the active Blumix server, but no option for "packaging server" is displayed at the menu. The default "push" option is working fine.

At the Eclipse IDE, is there a software component missing to create and publish a customized server package (beta + features) for Liberty? How can I run a customized packing without command line tools, using Eclipse?

Answer 1

There are two main ways to publish a packaged server in Bluemix:

1. You have (or create) a Liberty server instance that represents the server. For details on how to create a Liberty server, see http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSEQTP_8.5.5/com.ibm.websphere.wlp.doc/ae/t_creating_server.html. Once you have the Liberty server created in Eclipse, you can just add the Liberty server to the Bluemix server on the Servers view and it will package the server for you during the publish operation.
2. You already have an existing packaged server zip file in the workspace that you want to publish. Then, you can just right click on the zip file and do a Run As > Run on Server.

For details, you can refer to https://console.ng.bluemix.net/docs/manageapps/eclipsetools/eclipsetools.html#packagedserversupport

The first method is usually preferred since you can continue to update the applications and also the server configuration file and do incremental update on the application by the publish operation.