Document that actuator over HTTP requires Jackson

[philwebb]

A customer reported an issue to the Apps Manager team that was due to changes in the actuator API. The status keys have a value that is an object like:

"status": {
        "code": "UP",
        "description": ""
      }

The root cause is this annotation not being respected if Jackson isn't being used.

[ericus20]

How can I take up this issue and work on it?

[philwebb]

Hi @ericus20, thanks for the offer of help. I think we really need an additional note in our Actuator API documentation that lets people know that they need to be using Jackson in order to get the correct JSON responses.

I think the best place would be in the "Overview" section.

If you're interested in adding that you can edit this file. It's written using asciidoctor markup which you can read about at https://asciidoctor.org/.

[ericus20]

@philwebb Thanks a lot. I will work on that then.

[maksym-nazarenko]

@philwebb what about this documentation page?
I read it first as it is the first link I get in Google. Should it be updated as well?

[snicoll]

@Maxim-Nazarenko not sure that should be the reason to update this particular section. I was about to say that it might make sense in the overview for endpoints but it already has a link to the part Phil referenced:

To learn more about the Actuator’s endpoints and their request and response formats, please refer to the separate API documentation (HTML or PDF).

@ericus20 any update about this documentation update? Do you need help?

[ericus20]

Yeah, I am on it and almost through. Just double-checking a couple of stuff before I present it for review.

[maksym-nazarenko]

@snicoll I see, thanks for clarification.

I've created a #20173 but not sure what exactly should be put as a note.
If you could advise or provide me with an example of a good documentation section about dependencies, it would be great.

[snicoll]

@ericus20 hello, are you still willing to work on this issue?

[snicoll]

@ericus20 given the lack of feedback, I am putting this one back to the pool.

[maksym-nazarenko]

@snicoll does this PR #20173 cover the issue?
If so, I would like to help you with that and know more about SpringBoot internals to start helping not only with documentation stuff.

[snicoll]

@Maxim-Nazarenko I don't think it does but I would need to spend a bit more time to know for sure. I know @bclozel has done some changes in that area so I'll check with him today. Thanks for the PR in any case!