© 2020 The original authors.

Zipped distribution, Galleon provisioning or bootable JAR, this guide helps you identify the installation strategy that best fits your application requirements.

1. Installing WildFly from a zipped distribution

Downloading the WildFly release zip and unzipping it is the traditional way to install a complete WildFly server with support for both standalone and managed domain operating modes. A WildFly distribution contains a large number of default configurations allowing you to select the server features and operating modes.

A WildFly distribution based installation is well suited when:

  • You want to rely on a traditional Jakarta EE application deployment.

  • You want a Jakarta EE or Eclipse MicroProfile platform compliant server that offers all Jakarta EE or MicroProfile features.

  • You are not (yet) concerned by server installation size and memory footprint.

  • You are not yet sure of the kind of operating mode and application you are targeting.

  • Your server instances will contain one or more application deployments.

If that is the kind of installation you are aiming at, the guides that you should read next are:

2. Installing WildFly with Galleon

Galleon provisioning tooling allows you to construct a customized WildFly installation according to your application needs. Some applications don’t need a fully featured server supporting all operating modes and containing all Jakarta EE capabilities. Galleon tooling allows you to select the server capabilities you want to see installed.

A WildFly server provisioned with Galleon is well suited when:

  • You want to rely on a traditional Jakarta EE application deployment.

  • You want to easily update an installation to the latest WildFly version.

  • Your application requires only a subset of the Jakarta EE or Eclipse MicroProfile platform APIs (although Galleon can provision a server that supports the full set of Jakarta EE and MicroProfile platform APIs).

  • You are concerned by server installation size and memory footprint.

  • You are only using standalone operating mode (with support for High Availability or not).

  • Your server instances will contain one or more application deployments.

If that is the kind of installation you are aiming at, the guides that you should read next are:

3. WildFly Bootable JAR

A bootable JAR contains both a customized WildFly server and your deployment. Such a JAR can then run with a simple java command such as java -jar myapp-bootable.jar

A bootable JAR is built using Maven. You need to integrate the bootable JAR Maven plugin in the Maven project of your application.

A Bootable JAR is well suited when:

  • You want to leverage your existing WildFly applications.

  • You want to build a microservice composed of a server and a single application deployment.

  • You are concerned by JAR size and memory footprint.

  • You are only using standalone operating mode (with support for High Availability or not).

  • You are building your application using Maven.

If that is the kind of installation you are aiming at, the guide that you should read next is:

  • The Bootable JAR Guide shows you how to package your application and the WildFly server into a bootable JAR.