Cross-reference other configuration properties more consistently

[MahatmaFatalError]

This docu page https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/appendix/application-properties/index.html#application-properties.server.server.tomcat.max-connections states: "Maximum number of connections that the server accepts and processes at any given time. Once the limit has been reached, the operating system may still accept connections based on the "acceptCount" property."

But if you search for "acceptCount" you will find nothing. I assume https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/appendix/application-properties/index.html#application-properties.server.server.tomcat.accept-count server.tomcat.accept-count is meant with it. so I wanted to add a proper link to this property, however, it looks the adoc https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/blob/v3.3.4/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-docs/src/docs/antora/modules/appendix/pages/application-properties/index.adoc is broken, at least I cannot find the sources where those properties are documented.

[snicoll]

This section of the doc is auto-generated from the configuration properties metadata and there is no way to link one property with another. The best we could do is change the case of "acceptCount" to be "accept-count" to reduce the confusion.

[wilkinsona]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure that we can cross-link due to the way that the documentation is generated. However, we may be able to improve things by, for example, using the full property name or using accept-count rather than acceptCount.

We have a few places where we reference other properties. If we decide to change the description of max-connections, the others should probably be changed too. They are:

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/web/ServerProperties.java

Lines 433 to 439 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Maximum number of connections that the server accepts and processes at any
	* given time. Once the limit has been reached, the operating system may still
	* accept connections based on the "acceptCount" property.
	*/
	private int maxConnections = 8192;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/actuate/autoconfigure/metrics/export/influx/InfluxProperties.java

Lines 108 to 112 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Bucket for metrics. Use either the bucket name or ID. Defaults to the value of the
	* db property if not set. InfluxDB v2 only.
	*/
	private String bucket;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/task/TaskExecutionProperties.java

Lines 85 to 90 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Queue capacity. An unbounded capacity does not increase the pool and therefore
	* ignores the "max-size" property. Doesn't have an effect if virtual threads are
	* enabled.
	*/
	private int queueCapacity = Integer.MAX_VALUE;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/orm/jpa/JpaProperties.java

Lines 50 to 54 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Name of the target database to operate on, auto-detected by default. Can be
	* alternatively set using the "Database" enum.
	*/
	private String databasePlatform;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/orm/jpa/JpaProperties.java

Lines 56 to 60 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Target database to operate on, auto-detected by default. Can be alternatively set
	* using the "databasePlatform" property.
	*/
	private Database database;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/flyway/FlywayProperties.java

Lines 94 to 98 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Whether Flyway should attempt to create the schemas specified in the schemas
	* property.
	*/
	private boolean createSchemas = true;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/kafka/KafkaProperties.java

Lines 257 to 261 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Comma-delimited list of host:port pairs to use for establishing the initial
	* connections to the Kafka cluster. Overrides the global property, for consumers.
	*/
	private List<String> bootstrapServers;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/kafka/KafkaProperties.java

Lines 485 to 489 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Comma-delimited list of host:port pairs to use for establishing the initial
	* connections to the Kafka cluster. Overrides the global property, for producers.
	*/
	private List<String> bootstrapServers;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/kafka/KafkaProperties.java

Lines 775 to 779 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Comma-delimited list of host:port pairs to use for establishing the initial
	* connections to the Kafka cluster. Overrides the global property, for streams.
	*/
	private List<String> bootstrapServers;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/actuate/autoconfigure/metrics/export/newrelic/NewRelicProperties.java

Lines 37 to 43 in 689bce8

	/**
	* Whether to send the meter name as the event type instead of using the 'event-type'
	* configuration property value. Can be set to 'true' if New Relic guidelines are not
	* being followed or event types consistent with previous Spring Boot releases are
	* required.
	*/
	private boolean meterNameEventTypeEnabled;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/actuate/autoconfigure/metrics/export/newrelic/NewRelicProperties.java

Lines 45 to 49 in 689bce8

	/**
	* The event type that should be published. This property will be ignored if
	* 'meter-name-event-type-enabled' is set to 'true'.
	*/
	private String eventType = "SpringBootSample";

[wilkinsona]

There are more places where we reference other properties that my previous search didn't find. For example, we have several where we use the fully-qualified name of the property when referencing it. The following are some of these:

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/actuate/autoconfigure/metrics/export/atlas/AtlasProperties.java

Lines 81 to 87 in 6aa5ed7

	/**
	* Step size (reporting frequency) to use for streaming to Atlas LWC. This is the
	* highest supported resolution for getting an on-demand stream of the data. It must
	* be less than or equal to management.metrics.export.atlas.step and
	* management.metrics.export.atlas.step should be an even multiple of this value.
	*/
	private Duration lwcStep = Duration.ofSeconds(5);

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/actuate/autoconfigure/endpoint/jmx/JmxEndpointProperties.java

Lines 36 to 39 in 6aa5ed7

	/**
	* Endpoints JMX domain name. Fallback to 'spring.jmx.default-domain' if set.
	*/
	private String domain;

spring-boot/spring-boot-project/spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/actuate/autoconfigure/web/server/ManagementServerProperties.java

Lines 51 to 55 in 6aa5ed7

	/**
	* Management endpoint base path (for instance, '/management'). Requires a custom
	* management.server.port.
	*/
	private String basePath = "";

[wilkinsona]

We'd like to make them all consistent using the fully-qualified property name in each case. We also think it would be a good idea to wrap each property name in quotes, probably single quotes like 'management.server.port'.

[wilkinsona]

This is impossible to do in its entirety without support in the annotation processor. For example, org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.data.redis.RedisProperties.Pool is used by both org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.data.redis.RedisProperties.Jedis and org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.data.redis.RedisProperties.Lettuce and the fully-qualified name of the time-between-eviction-runs property that it references varies depending on the user.

I'm going to defer this until we can enhance the annotation processor to support automatically generating such cross-references. Such cross-references will allow us to support the case above while also hopefully allowing us to verify that the referenced property exists. I've opened #42981 which I now consider to be a prerequisite for this issue.