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Reacting to Other Plugins

When another plugin is applied the Spring Boot plugin reacts by making various changes to the project’s configuration. This section describes those changes.

Reacting to the Java Plugin

When Gradle’s java plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin:

  1. Creates a BootJar task named bootJar that will create an executable, uber jar for the project. The jar will contain everything on the runtime classpath of the main source set; classes are packaged in BOOT-INF/classes and jars are packaged in BOOT-INF/lib

  2. Configures the assemble task to depend on the bootJar task.

  3. Configures the jar task to use plain as the convention for its archive classifier.

  4. Creates a BootBuildImage task named bootBuildImage that will create a OCI image using a buildpack.

  5. Creates a BootRun task named bootRun that can be used to run your application using the main source set to find its main method and provide its runtime classpath.

  6. Creates a BootRun task named bootTestRun that can be used to run your application using the test source set to find its main method and provide its runtime classpath.

  7. Creates a configuration named bootArchives that contains the artifact produced by the bootJar task.

  8. Creates a configuration named developmentOnly for dependencies that are only required at development time, such as Spring Boot’s Devtools, and should not be packaged in executable jars and wars.

  9. Creates a configuration named testAndDevelopmentOnly for dependencies that are only required at development time and when writing and running tests and that should not be packaged in executable jars and wars.

  10. Creates a configuration named productionRuntimeClasspath. It is equivalent to runtimeClasspath minus any dependencies that only appear in the developmentOnly or testDevelopmentOnly configurations.

  11. Configures any JavaCompile tasks with no configured encoding to use UTF-8.

  12. Configures any JavaCompile tasks to use the -parameters compiler argument.

Reacting to the Kotlin Plugin

When Kotlin’s Gradle plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin:

  1. Aligns the Kotlin version used in Spring Boot’s dependency management with the version of the plugin. This is achieved by setting the kotlin.version property with a value that matches the version of the Kotlin plugin.

  2. Configures any KotlinCompile tasks to use the -java-parameters compiler argument.

Reacting to the War Plugin

When Gradle’s war plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin:

  1. Creates a BootWar task named bootWar that will create an executable, fat war for the project. In addition to the standard packaging, everything in the providedRuntime configuration will be packaged in WEB-INF/lib-provided.

  2. Configures the assemble task to depend on the bootWar task.

  3. Configures the war task to use plain as the convention for its archive classifier.

  4. Configures the bootArchives configuration to contain the artifact produced by the bootWar task.

Reacting to the Dependency Management Plugin

When the io.spring.dependency-management plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin will automatically import the spring-boot-dependencies bom.

Reacting to the Application Plugin

When Gradle’s application plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin:

  1. Creates a CreateStartScripts task named bootStartScripts that will create scripts that launch the artifact in the bootArchives configuration using java -jar. The task is configured to use the applicationDefaultJvmArgs property as a convention for its defaultJvmOpts property.

  2. Creates a new distribution named boot and configures it to contain the artifact in the bootArchives configuration in its lib directory and the start scripts in its bin directory.

  3. Configures the bootRun task to use the mainClassName property as a convention for its main property.

  4. Configures the bootRun and bootTestRun tasks to use the applicationDefaultJvmArgs property as a convention for their jvmArgs property.

  5. Configures the bootJar task to use the mainClassName property as a convention for the Start-Class entry in its manifest.

  6. Configures the bootWar task to use the mainClassName property as a convention for the Start-Class entry in its manifest.

Reacting to the GraalVM Native Image Plugin

When the GraalVM Native Image plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin:

  1. Applies the org.springframework.boot.aot plugin that:

    1. Registers aot and aotTest source sets.

    2. Registers a ProcessAot task named processAot that will generate AOT-optimized source for the application in the aot source set.

    3. Configures the Java compilation and process resources tasks for the aot source set to depend upon processAot.

    4. Registers a ProcessTestAot task named processTestAot that will generated AOT-optimized source for the application’s tests in the aotTest source set.

    5. Configures the Java compilation and process resources tasks for the aotTest source set to depend upon processTestAot.

  2. Adds the output of the aot source set to the classpath of the main GraalVM native binary.

  3. Adds the output of the aotTest source set to the classpath of the test GraalVM native binary.

  4. Configures the GraalVM extension to disable Toolchain detection.

  5. Configures each GraalVM native binary to require GraalVM 22.3 or later.

  6. Configures the bootJar task to include the reachability metadata produced by the collectReachabilityMetadata task in its jar.

  7. Configures the bootBuildImage task to use paketobuildpacks/builder-jammy-tiny:latest as its builder and to set BP_NATIVE_IMAGE to true in its environment.

Reacting to the CycloneDX Plugin

When the CycloneDX plugin is applied to a project, the Spring Boot plugin:

  1. Configures the cyclonedxBom task to use the application project type and output the SBOM to the application.cdx file in JSON format without full license texts.

  2. Adds the SBOM under META-INF/sbom in the generated jar or war file.

  3. Adds the Sbom-Format and Sbom-Location to the manifest of the jar or war file.