Running the box: Docker, Linux, the JVM
Where does app.jar find its dependencies? The JVM rule hiding in your Dockerfile
Spring Boot's layered jar extraction splits your dependencies from your code for faster Docker rebuilds. But the mechanism that makes the pieces find each other at runtime isn't Spring at all — it's a JVM rule from 1998.
8 Jul 2026
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5 min read
Spring and Java mechanics
Flyway on Spring Boot 4 and Java 25: a silent failure, and what it taught me about modular auto-config
Wiring Flyway into a Spring Boot 4.1 / Java 25 app with a Docker-Compose Postgres - including the Boot 4 auto-config modularization gotcha that makes a missing starter look exactly like a missing library.
28 Jun 2026
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6 min read
Traces, Tempo and the LGTM stack
Manual tracing in Spring Boot with OpenTelemetry: @WithSpan, hand-built spans, and the traps in between
Wiring OpenTelemetry into Spring Boot 4 — the annotation way and the manual Tracer way — plus the context model that ties them together and the gotchas that cost me time (a silent @WithSpan, http/protobuf vs gRPC, and Docker's 'is a directory').
23 Jun 2026
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6 min read
Security and privacy, in practice
Docker secrets: the delivery channel is the whole game
Five ways to hand a secret to a Docker container, ranked by who can read it back out. The source is just plumbing - environment variable vs file is what actually decides your exposure.
20 Jun 2026
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5 min read