How to use spring boot in gradle without the spring boot gradle plugin

Question

Can anyone show me or point me to a spring boot gradle project that does not make use of the spring boot gradle plugin.

I'm looking for something like a spring boot starter web hello world example that doesn't use the gradle plugin.

I can't imagine that the plugin is a requirement, but a search for examples all seem to lean on the gradle plugin, which lets just say is not an option in my environment, and no I can't switch to maven either.

Ideally the gradle build would work by adding something like the following:

gradle.properties

springBootVersion=2.1.3.RELEASE

build.gradle

dependencies {
   compile group: 'org.springframework.boot', name: 'spring-boot-starter-web', version: springBootVersion

}

Answer 1

I used the spring dependency management plugin, and it works

buildscript {
 ext {
        springDepManagementVersion = '1.0.10.RELEASE'
        springBootVersion = '2.6.6'
        springCloudVersion = "2021.0.1"
  }

dependencies {
        classpath "io.spring.gradle:dependency-management-plugin:${springDepManagementVersion}"
        
    }
}

apply plugin: 'io.spring.dependency-management'

dependencyManagement {
    imports {
        mavenBom "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-dependencies:${springCloudVersion}"
        mavenBom "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-dependencies:${springBootVersion}"
    }
}

dependencies {
    implementation "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-sleuth"
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-json'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-mail'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security'
    ...
}

I can't use spring boot gradle plugin, since I can only use gradle 6.7.1, while spring boot gradle plugin requires gradle version at least 6.8 to support spring boot 2.6. I was inspired by the spring cloud bom solution.