Spring Boot Dependency Management

1. Introduction

Dependency Management in Spring Boot is used to manage all required libraries in one place.

A dependency is:

• A library that provides functionality

• Used in your application

Spring Boot makes dependency management easy and automatic.

2. Importance of Dependency Management

• Centralized management in one file

• Automatic version control

• Prevents version conflicts

• Easy to maintain

3. How Dependency Management Works

• Add dependencies in:

  • pom.xml (Maven)

  • build.gradle (Gradle)

• Dependencies are downloaded from Maven Central

• Stored in local system (.m2 folder)

• Spring Boot uses them automatically

4. Build Tools

Spring Boot supports:

Maven

• Uses pom.xml

• Most commonly used

Gradle

• Uses build.gradle

• Faster build system

5. Spring Boot Starters

Starters are pre-defined dependency packages.

They include:

• Required libraries

• Default configuration

Example

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<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

Types of Starters

• Application starters

  • spring-boot-starter-web

• Technical starters

  • spring-boot-starter-security

• Production starters

  • spring-boot-starter-actuator

6. Maven Dependency Example

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<dependencies>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
        <artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
        <optional>true</optional>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>

</dependencies>

7. Starter Parent (Important)

Spring Boot uses a parent configuration:

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<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>3.x.x</version>
</parent>

Benefits

• Default configuration

• No need to specify dependency versions

• Automatic version management

8. Overriding Dependency Version

You can override versions:

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<properties>
    <slf4j.version>2.x.x</slf4j.version>
</properties>

9. Maven Plugin

Used to build executable jar:

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

10. Developer Tools

Used for faster development:

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<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
</dependency>

11. Gradle Example

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dependencies {
    implementation("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    testImplementation("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}

12. Key Points

• Do not manually add versions in most cases

• Spring Boot manages versions automatically

• Use starters for easy setup

13. Conclusion

• Dependency management is core feature of Spring Boot

• Makes development simple and fast

• Reduces configuration effort