For this recipe, we will use our existing application build. We will examine how the self-starting executable JAR files get created and how to modify the default launch script to add support for the custom JVM start up arguments, such as the -D start up system properties, JVM memory, Garbage Collection, and other settings.

For this recipe, make sure that build.gradle is using Spring Boot version 2.0.0 or above. If it is not, then change the following setting in the buildscript configuration block:

ext { 
  springBootVersion = '2.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT' 
} 

The same upgrade of the Spring Boot version should be done in the db-counter-starter/build.gradle file as well.