Installing a Liferay Server in Liferay Developer Studio

Register a Liferay DXP bundle with Liferay Developer Studio (LDS) so you can start, stop, debug, and deploy to it from the IDE. Each registered server appears in the Servers view, and LDS controls it directly — no separate terminal start/stop is needed.

Prerequisites

A local Liferay DXP bundle. See Starting with a Docker Image for a quick bundle, or any other installation method.
Liferay Developer Studio installed. See Liferay Developer Studio.

Add the Server

In the Servers view, click No servers are available. Click this link to create a new server….

If you have already configured a server, right-click in the Servers view and select New → Server instead.
Open the Liferay, Inc. category and select Liferay 7.x.
Optionally rename the server (the name appears in the Servers view) and click Next.
Browse to the installation folder of your Liferay DXP bundle. For Tomcat-based bundles, point at the Tomcat directory (for example, ~/liferay-dxp/tomcat-X.Y.ZZ).
Select a JRE — JDK 17 or 21 — and click Finish.

The new server appears in the Servers view.

Control the Server

The Servers view toolbar provides three primary actions:

Action	Description
Start	Boots the Liferay DXP server. Console output appears in the Console view.
Stop	Shuts the server down.
Debug	Boots the server in debug mode for breakpoint-based debugging from LDS.