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Upgrading org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security 3 to 4

Breaking3.5.16 → 4.1.2Breaking47Security2Platform5Deprecated11New208Changed973Fixed466Other294

BreakingUpgrade verdict

47 breaking changes and 5 platform requirement changes and 2 security fixes.

  • If your project uses Protobuf with gRPC, the build tool no longer sets up gRPC support for you automatically. You now have to turn it on yourself.
  • The Jetty starter no longer pulls in a servlet library it did not use. If your code uses classes from that library, add it to your build yourself.
  • Removes support for the deprecated layertools jar mode.
  • Removes support for deprecated Logback properties.
Top 5 of 65 that need code or config changes

org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security publishes an official migration guide for version 4. It covers more than the release notes do.

A migration guide ↗

Adds org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-security 4.1.2.

Drops org.springframework.security:spring-security-config, org.springframework.security:spring-security-web.

Installs 27 packages in all (was 25).

Breaking47
Spring Boot's Gradle plugin no longer automatically configures gRPC when the Protobuf plugin is applied.
protobufgrpcprotoc-gen-grpc-java
Removes the unused jetty-ee11-servlets dependency from spring-boot-jetty; applications using its classes must declare it.
org.eclipse.jetty.ee11:jetty-ee11-servletsspring-boot-jetty
Removes support for the deprecated layertools jar mode.
layertools
Removes support for deprecated Logback properties.
Logback
Removes the unused dependency on org.eclipse.jetty.ee11:jetty-ee11-servlets from spring-boot-jetty.
org.eclipse.jetty.ee11:jetty-ee11-servletsspring-boot-jetty
Removes support for Spring Pulsar Reactive.
Removes ConcurrentReferenceCachingMetadataReaderFactory.
ConcurrentReferenceCachingMetadataReaderFactory
Removes integration for REST Docs' REST Assured support until REST Assured supports Groovy 5.
Removes support for embedded jar launch scripts.
Removes support for Spring Session Data MongoDB.
Removes support for Spring Session Hazelcast.
Drops Spock until it supports Groovy 5.
Renames Jackson-specific Json… annotations and classes to Jackson….
Renames spring-boot-tx module to spring-boot-transaction.
spring-boot-txspring-boot-transaction
Renames SharedObjectMapper to SharedJsonMapper.
SharedObjectMapperSharedJsonMapper
Removes the SQL and Reactor starters as they are only used transitively.
Renames Spring Session properties that depend on Spring Data.
Renames JsonMapper-specific properties to make clear they are JSON-specific.
JsonMapper
Removes Bitnami support.
Renames …DataAutoConfiguration to Data…AutoConfiguration.
…DataAutoConfigurationData…AutoConfiguration
Drops spring-boot-loader-classic support.
spring-boot-loader-classic
Removes auto-configuration support for '@HttpServiceClient'.
@HttpServiceClient
Renames spring.mongodb.uuid-representation.
spring.mongodb.uuid-representation
Removes GridFs from MongoConnectionDetails.
MongoConnectionDetailsGridFs
Renames *DataProperties classes to Data*Properties.
*DataPropertiesData*Properties
Drops support for Jersey until it supports JAX-RS 4 (Jakarta EE 11).
JerseyJAX-RS 4
Removes dependency management for Spring Retry in favor of spring-core's new retry support.
Spring Retryspring-core
Removes isImmutable and getPrefix from OriginLookup.
OriginLookupisImmutablegetPrefix
Renames spring-boot-starter-aop to spring-boot-starter-aspectj.
spring-boot-starter-aopspring-boot-starter-aspectj
Renames MongoDB properties that do not require Spring Data MongoDB.
MongoDB
Renames metrics, observation, and tracing modules to include micrometer in their names and packages.
Drops support for Undertow as it is not Servlet 6.1 compatible.
Undertow
Drops Actuator endpoint parameter support for javax.annotations.NonNull.
javax.annotations.NonNull
Removes StreamBuilderFactoryBeanCustomizer in favor of Spring Kafka's StreamsBuilderFactoryBeanConfigurer.
StreamBuilderFactoryBeanCustomizerStreamsBuilderFactoryBeanConfigurer
Makes auto-configurations final and removes public members.
Drops support for Wavefront.
Wavefront
Removes APIs that were deprecated for removal in 4.0 or earlier.
Uses Charset instead of String for Mustache template encoding.
CharsetString
Renames spring-boot-starter-kotlin-serialization to spring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-json and its test starter accordingly.
spring-boot-starter-kotlin-serializationspring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-jsonspring-boot-starter-kotlin-serialization-testspring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-json-test
Using TestRestTemplate now requires a dependency on spring-boot-restclient.
TestRestTemplatespring-boot-restclient
Moves spring.jackson.datetime.<feature-name> to spring.jackson.datatype.datetime<feature-name>.
spring.jackson.datetime.<feature-name>spring.jackson.datatype.datetime<feature-name>
Makes all type exclude filters package-private.
Makes ConfigDataLocation.of non-nullable.
ConfigDataLocation.of
Makes SanitizableData.key non-nullable.
SanitizableData.key
Always uses mongodb rather than mongo in MongoDB-related configuration properties.
Replaces @OptionalParameter with JSpecify's @Nullable.
@OptionalParameter@Nullable
Replaces ClientHttpRequestFactorySettings.Redirects with HttpRedirects.
ClientHttpRequestFactorySettings.RedirectsHttpRedirects
Security2
Applies HTML escaping to the timestamp attribute in the Whitelabel error page.
Applies HTML escaping to the timestamp attribute in the Whitelabel error page.
Platform5
Upgrades to jOOQ 3.20 and requires Java 21 to use it.
jOOQ
Updates Neo4j support to require Neo4j Java Driver 6.0.0.
Raises the minimum supported version of the CycloneDX Gradle Plugin to 3.0.0.
CycloneDX Gradle Plugin
Raises the minimum supported version of Gradle to 8.14.
Gradle
Supports Gradle 9.
Gradle
Deprecated11
Deprecates SpringJtaPlatform, which should have been deprecated since 4.1.0-M3.
SpringJtaPlatform
Deprecates OpenTelemetry's ZipkinSpanExporter, with support to be removed in Spring Boot 4.2.
ZipkinSpanExporter
Deprecates LiveReload support for removal.
Deprecates RootUriTemplateHandler in favor of DefaultUriBuilderFactory.
RootUriTemplateHandlerDefaultUriBuilderFactory
Delays removal of Jackson 2 support until 4.3 at the earliest.
Deprecates Derby support since Apache Derby is retired.
Derby
Deprecates OpenTelemetry's ZipkinSpanExporter, with support to be removed in Spring Boot 4.2.
ZipkinSpanExporter
Delays removal of Jackson 2 support until 4.3 at the earliest.
Reintroduces the previous EnvironmentPostProcessor in deprecated form.
EnvironmentPostProcessor
Deprecates JUnit 4 integration.
Deprecates ANT_PATH_MATCHER.
ANT_PATH_MATCHER