Disable Mule flow at startup - continue or ignore startup failure - exception

Question

Mule project has multiple flows some of which have endpoints that may be offline at startup during testing. A failed endpoint in any flow is causing the entire Mule project to fail to deploy. Console logs that domain status is deployed but application status = FAILED.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Starting app 'test' +
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. Root Exception was: Connection refused: connect. Type: class java.net.ConnectException
ERROR 2018-01-09 10:31:08,287 [main] org.mule.module.launcher.application.DefaultMuleApplication:
********************************************************************************
Message : Could not connect to broker URL: tcp://localhost:61616.
Reason: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect
JMS Code : null
*************************************************************
* Application "test" shut down normally on: 1/9/18 10:31 AM *
* Up for: 0 days, 0 hours, 0 mins, 1.449 sec *
*************************************************************
ERROR 2018-01-09 10:31:08,413 [main] org.mule.module.launcher.DefaultArchiveDeployer:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ Failed to deploy artifact 'test', see below +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
org.mule.module.launcher.DeploymentStartException: ConnectException: Connection refused: connect
Have tried to set initialState="stopped" on flows that could have startup connection issues but has no affect on running the project. Project still fails to run and no flows are running.
Added CatchExceptionStrategy to the inbound endpoints that can fail at startup to no available. Also tried "Until Successful" scope in flow.
In particular have some JMS and Web service components which may be offline at different times during development and testing. Want to configure flows to allow overall project to continue even if a single component/flow fails to connect at startup. Want to manage a single project with multiple flows such that some flows may not be active.
Environment: Anypoint Studio and Mule 3.9.0 EE.

Answer 1

If you would like your deployment to succeed even when your service is not available, you will need to supply a reconnection strategy on the JMS Connector with blocking=false. For example:
<jms:activemq-connector name="Active_MQ" username="a" password="b" brokerURL="tcp://localhost:61616" validateConnections="true" doc:name="Active MQ">
<reconnect-forever blocking="false"/>
</jms:activemq-connector>
More information on reconnection strategies can be found in the MuleSoft documentation here: https://docs.mulesoft.com/mule-user-guide/v/3.9/configuring-reconnection-strategies if needed.