Once upon a time I heard about something google did internally to make status reporting easier, basically a small service that you'd send little text updates -- aka "snippets" -- to (via cli, web ui, email, whatever) that'd be collated periodically for your manager to view in lieu of having to have a bunch of status update meetings. I've always thought that a sort of "status twitter" would be potentially kind of a cool thing, even if using tech as a hammer for social problems like communicating effectively has a track record that is, at best, mixed.

So that ended up turning into this Spring Boot service. I'll probably split out a separate client repo at some point once I get the basic web ui and rest api stood up.

• cut a first release, i'm not completely embarrassed by it so i guess it's v1.0?

• integrate with ticket systems like jira?
• slack integration?
• periodic summary/digest generation (to whichever channels, like email, slack etc.)
• fancier web reporting ui to view updates along an org chart tree?

• 1.0: January 2026 - initial public release

# 1. Create PostgreSQL database
createdb jsnippets
createuser jsnippets

# 2. Set environment variables
export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=development
export PG_HOST=localhost
export PG_USER=jsnippets
export PG_PASS=your_password

# 3. Run application
./mvnw spring-boot:run

# With environment variables
export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod
export PG_HOST=prod-db-host
export PG_USER=jsnippets
export PG_PASS=secure_password

java -jar target/jsnippets-{version}.jar

See Docker Deployment section above.

The application uses Spring Boot profiles for environment-specific configuration:

• Default/Production: Production-safe defaults (spring.jpa.show-sql=false, logging.level.root=INFO)
• Development: Verbose logging with SQL output (spring.jpa.show-sql=true, DEBUG level)
• Test: In-memory H2 database for automated testing

Set profile via environment variable or command line:

# Development mode (verbose logging)
export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=development
./mvnw spring-boot:run

# Production mode (uses secure defaults)
java -jar jsnippets.jar

See CONFIGURATION_GUIDE.md for complete details.

# 1. Create environment file
cp .env.example .env

# 2. Set secure password in .env
echo "DB_PASSWORD=your_secure_password" >> .env

# 3. Build with dynamic metadata and start (podman or docker)
./build-image.sh
docker-compose up -d # or podman-compose up -d

# 4. Access application
open http://localhost:8080

# Recommended: Use build script with dynamic OCI metadata
./build-image.sh

# Or build manually with dynamic labels
docker build \
  --build-arg BUILD_DATE=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) \
  --build-arg APP_VERSION=$(./mvnw help:evaluate -Dexpression=project.version -q -DforceStdout) \
  --build-arg VCS_REF=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD) \
  -t jsnippets:latest .

# Run with external database
docker run -d -p 8080:8080 \
  -e SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod \
  -e PG_HOST=your-db-host \
  -e PG_USER=jsnippets \
  -e PG_PASS=your-password \
  jsnippets:latest

mvn clean package

Find jar file in target/jsnippets-{version}.jar

# Recommended: Use the build script for proper OCI metadata
./build-image.sh

# Build script options:
./build-image.sh --no-cache   # Force rebuild without cache
./build-image.sh --push       # Build and push to registry

# Or build manually with dynamic labels
docker build \
  --build-arg BUILD_DATE=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ) \
  --build-arg APP_VERSION=$(./mvnw help:evaluate -Dexpression=project.version -q -DforceStdout) \
  --build-arg VCS_REF=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD) \
  -t jsnippets:latest .

# Simple build (without metadata)
docker build -t jsnippets:latest .

The build script automatically:

• Detects podman or docker
• Extracts version from pom.xml
• Adds git commit hash (marks -dirty if uncommitted changes)
• Sets OCI-compliant image labels (version, created date, revision, etc.)
• Tags image with both version number and latest

Produces jsnippets:latest using a multi-stage Dockerfile (~350MB).

mvn clean spring-boot:build-image

Produces jsnippets:latest using Paketo buildpack (~400-500MB).

• jre 21+ (tested with 21, and 25; docker images use 21)
• postgresql (anything recent, say 10+)
• mail server (optional)

• jdk 21+ (tested with 21, and 25)
• maven 3

Really, even 17 would probably still work, but it goes EOL later this year, and artifacts are more easily available for aarch64 as x86 with 21+, so I've moved to 21 as the minimum supported version. If for some reason you can't use 21 or newer, you can probably still build with 17 by editing pom.xml to change the source and target versions as well as performing whichever Docker incantations you might need to use a 17-based image.

Comprehensive guides are available for deployment and configuration:

• CONFIGURATION_GUIDE.md - Complete configuration reference

  • Profile-based configuration (dev/prod/test)
  • Environment variables
  • Database configuration
  • Best practices

• DOCKER_DEPLOYMENT.md - Docker deployment guide

  • Quick start with Docker Compose
  • Manual Docker commands
  • Kubernetes and Docker Swarm examples
  • Monitoring and troubleshooting
  • Backup and restore procedures

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