Spring-boot: What are the spring.provides for?

[dennislaumen]

When browsing the source code for the different starters for Spring Boot I'm stumbling upon _spring.provides_ files. I'm not sure what these files are doing and what these are for. I'm looking into building some starters for some frameworks we're using but am unsure as to why I'd have to add these files (and what I should put into it).

I'm hoping someone can clarify this for me (it might be a bit "under the hood" but it would be a nice addition to the documentation).

[dsyer]

It's for tooling. STS (and other IDEs if they chose to) can index those files and make autocomplete suggestions based on stuff that isn't yet on the classpath.

[dennislaumen]

Thanks @dsyer! That makes sense. I don't use STS so it might be clear to STS users.