Spring-boot: Gradle 5 compatibility with Boot 2.1.x and Gradle plugins

[asarkar]

The context of this ticket is migration from Boot 1.x + Gradle 3.x to Boot 2.1.x and Gradle 4+. I asked this question on Twitter to @wilkinsona but not having received a response, formally opening a ticket.

I see https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/15005, although it's not clear whether the Sprng Boot Gradle plugin or the Spring Dependency Management plugin is being referred to in that ticket. Thus, I've the following questions:

1. Given that Gradle 5 has 1st-class support for dependency management, is the Spring Dependency Management plugin still required in a Boot project?
2. Is Spring Boot 2.1.x fully compatible with Gradle 5? Like I said, it's not clear what plugin was tested by 15005, and if the whole Boot codebase has been certified.

[philwebb]

At the time of writing Gradle 5 is only at RC2 so we won't be officially supporting it until Spring Boot 2.2. The efforts in #15005 were more about us tracking the release to make sure nothing obvious breaks.

There's some interesting discussion in https://github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/5434 about the dependency management support, but we've not formulated any specific recommendations at this time.

[asarkar]

@philwebb Thank you for the clarification. When is Boot 2.2 planned for - I don't see it in the official calendar.

On a separate note, the tag for:stackoverflow is questionable; this question would immediately get shutdown on SO, and attract downvotes. It's not a programming question, it's a milestone/compatibility question.

[wilkinsona]

See also https://github.com/spring-gradle-plugins/dependency-management-plugin/issues/211.

[wilkinsona]

Given that Gradle 5 has 1st-class support for dependency management, is the Spring Dependency Management plugin still required in a Boot project?

If you're using Spring Boot 2, it's not required now. Gradle 5 won't change that.

If you have any further questions please ask on Stack Overflow or Gitter. As mentioned in the guidelines for contributing, we prefer to use GitHub issues only for bugs and enhancements.

[philwebb]

We've not got a release date for 2.2 yet but it'll probably be in 6-8 months.

On a separate note, the tag for:stackoverflow is questionable; this question would immediately get shutdown on SO, and attract downvotes. It's not a programming question, it's a milestone/compatibility question.

Yeah, it's frustrating that we don't have a good home for this kind of question. We'd prefer them to outside of the issue tracker but stackoverflow have their own policy.