12. Build systems

It is strongly recommended that you choose a build system that supports dependency management, and one that can consume artifacts published to the “Maven Central” repository. We would recommend that you choose Maven or Gradle. It is possible to get Spring Boot to work with other build systems (Ant for example), but they will not be particularly well supported.

12.1 Maven

Maven users can inherit from the spring-boot-starter-parent project to obtain sensible defaults. The parent project provides the following features:

12.1.1 Inheriting the starter parent

To configure your project to inherit from the spring-boot-starter-parent simply set the parent:

<!-- Inherit defaults from Spring Boot -->
<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0.RELEASE</version>
</parent>
[Note]Note

You should only need to specify the Spring Boot version number on this dependency. if you import additional starters, you can safely omit the version number.

12.1.2 Using your own parent POM

If you don’t want to use the Spring Boot starter parent, you can use your own and still keep the benefit of the dependency management (but not the plugin management) using a scope=import dependency:

<dependencyManagement>
     <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <!-- Import dependency management from Spring Boot -->
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.0.RELEASE</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

12.1.3 Changing the Java version

The spring-boot-starter-parent chooses fairly conservative Java compatibility. If you want to follow our recommendation and use a later Java version you can add a java.version property:

<properties>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

12.1.4 Using the Spring Boot Maven plugin

Spring Boot includes a Maven plugin that can package the project as an executable jar. Add the plugin to your <plugins> section if you want to use it:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>
[Note]Note

You only need to add the plugin, there is no need for to configure it unless you want to change the settings defined in the parent.

12.2 Gradle

Gradle users can directly import “starter POMs” in their dependencies section. Unlike Maven, there is no “super parent” to import to share some configuration.

apply plugin: 'java'

repositories { mavenCentral() }
dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.0.0.RELEASE")
}

The spring-boot-gradle-plugin is also available and provides tasks to create executable jars and run projects from source. It also adds a ResolutionStrategy that enables you to omit the version number for “blessed” dependencies:

buildscript {
    repositories { mavenCentral() }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.0.0.RELEASE")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'

repositories { mavenCentral() }
dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}

12.3 Ant

It is possible to build a Spring Boot project using Apache Ant, however, no special support or plugins are provided. Ant scripts can use the Ivy dependency system to import starter POMs.

See the Section 63.1, “Build an executable archive with Ant” “How-to” for more complete instructions.

12.4 Starter POMs

Starter POMs are a set of convenient dependency descriptors that you can include in your application. You get a one-stop-shop for all the Spring and related technology that you need, without having to hunt through sample code and copy paste loads of dependency descriptors. For example, if you want to get started using Spring and JPA for database access, just include the spring-boot-starter-data-jpa dependency in your project, and you are good to go.

The starters contain a lot of the dependencies that you need to get a project up and running quickly and with a consistent, supported set of managed transitive dependencies.

The following application starters are provided by Spring Boot under the org.springframework.boot group:

Table 12.1. Spring Boot application starters

NameDescription

spring-boot-starter

The core Spring Boot starter, including auto-configuration support, logging and YAML.

spring-boot-starter-amqp

Support for the “Advanced Message Queuing Protocol” via spring-rabbit.

spring-boot-starter-aop

Full AOP programming support including spring-aop and AspectJ.

spring-boot-starter-batch

Support for “Spring Batch” including HSQLDB database.

spring-boot-starter-data-jpa

Full support for the “Java Persistence API” including spring-data-jpa, spring-orm and Hibernate.

spring-boot-starter-data-mongodb

Support for the MongoDB NoSQL Database, including spring-data-mongodb.

spring-boot-starter-data-rest

Support for exposing Spring Data repositories over REST via spring-data-rest-webmvc.

spring-boot-starter-integration

Support for common spring-integration modules.

spring-boot-starter-jdbc

JDBC Database support.

spring-boot-starter-mobile

Support for spring-mobile

spring-boot-starter-redis

Support for the REDIS key-value data store, including spring-redis.

spring-boot-starter-security

Support for spring-security.

spring-boot-starter-test

Support for common test dependencies, including JUnit, Hamcrest and Mockito along with the spring-test module.

spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf

Support for the Thymeleaf templating engine, including integration with Spring.

spring-boot-starter-web

Support for full-stack web development, including Tomcat and spring-webmvc.

spring-boot-starter-websocket

Support for websocket development with Tomcat.


In addition to the application starters, the following starters can be used to add production ready features.

Table 12.2. Spring Boot production ready starters

NameDescription

spring-boot-starter-actuator

Adds production ready features such as metrics and monitoring.

spring-boot-starter-remote-shell

Adds remote ssh shell support.


Finally, Spring Boot includes some starters that can be used if you want to exclude or swap specific technical facets.

Table 12.3. Spring Boot technical starters

NameDescription

spring-boot-starter-jetty

Imports the Jetty HTTP engine (to be used as an alternative to Tomcat)

spring-boot-starter-log4j

Support the Log4J logging framework

spring-boot-starter-logging

Import Spring Boot’s default logging framework (Logback).

spring-boot-starter-tomcat

Import Spring Boot’s default HTTP engine (Tomcat).


[Tip]Tip

For a list of additional community contributed starter POMs, see the README file in the spring-boot-starters module on GitHub.