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

Breaking3.5.16 → 4.1.2Breaking49Security1Platform5Deprecated11New208Changed1043Fixed506Other282

Full comparisonBack to org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter
BreakingUpgrade verdict

49 breaking changes and 5 platform requirement changes and a security fix.

In plain terms
  • If your project uses both Protobuf and gRPC with Gradle, the build plugin no longer sets up gRPC for you automatically. You now have to turn it on yourself.
  • A library that Spring Boot's Jetty support used to pull in is no longer included. If your code uses classes from it, you now need to add it to your build yourself.
  • Removes support for the deprecated layertools jar mode.
  • Removes support for deprecated Logback properties.
Must act Top 5 of 66 that need code or config changes

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

A migration guide ↗

Drops org.springframework.boot:spring-boot, org.springframework:spring-core.

Installs 20 packages in all (was 19).

What you must change

Breaking49
Spring Boot's Gradle plugin no longer automatically configures gRPC when the Protobuf plugin is applied.
protobufgrpcprotoc-gen-grpc-java
4.1.1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes the unused jetty-ee11-servlets dependency from spring-boot-jetty; applications using its classes must declare it themselves.
org.eclipse.jetty.ee11:jetty-ee11-servletsspring-boot-jetty
4.1.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes support for the deprecated layertools jar mode.
layertools
4.1.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes support for deprecated Logback properties.
Logback
4.1.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
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
4.0.2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes support for Spring Pulsar Reactive.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes ConcurrentReferenceCachingMetadataReaderFactory.
ConcurrentReferenceCachingMetadataReaderFactory
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes integration for REST Docs' REST Assured support until REST Assured supports Groovy 5.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes support for embedded jar launch scripts.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes support for Spring Session Data MongoDB.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes support for Spring Session Hazelcast.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Drops Spock until it supports Groovy 5.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames Jackson-specific Json… annotations and classes to Jackson….
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames spring-boot-tx module to spring-boot-transaction.
spring-boot-txspring-boot-transaction
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames SharedObjectMapper to SharedJsonMapper.
SharedObjectMapperSharedJsonMapper
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes the SQL and Reactor starters, which were only used transitively.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames Spring Session properties that depend on Spring Data.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames JsonMapper-specific properties to make clear they are JSON-specific.
JsonMapper
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes Bitnami support.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames …DataAutoConfiguration to Data…AutoConfiguration.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Drops spring-boot-loader-classic support.
spring-boot-loader-classic
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes explicit dependency management for Spring Authorization Server as it is now part of Spring Security.
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes auto-configuration support for '@HttpServiceClient'.
@HttpServiceClient
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames spring.mongodb.uuid-representation.
spring.mongodb.uuid-representation
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes the Spring Data MongoDB dependency from MongoDB health support.
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes GridFs from MongoConnectionDetails.
MongoConnectionDetailsGridFs
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames *DataProperties classes to Data*Properties.
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Drops support for Jersey until it supports JAX-RS 4 (Jakarta EE 11).
JerseyJAX-RS 4
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes dependency management for Spring Retry in favor of spring-core's new retry support.
Spring Retryspring-core
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes isImmutable and getPrefix from OriginLookup.
OriginLookupisImmutablegetPrefix
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames spring-boot-starter-aop to spring-boot-starter-aspectj.
spring-boot-starter-aopspring-boot-starter-aspectj
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames MongoDB properties that do not require Spring Data MongoDB.
MongoDB
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames metrics, observation, and tracing modules to include micrometer in their names and packages.
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Drops support for Undertow because it is not Servlet 6.1 compatible.
Undertow
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Drops Actuator endpoint parameter support for javax.annotations.NonNull.
javax.annotations.NonNull
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes StreamBuilderFactoryBeanCustomizer in favor of Spring Kafka's StreamsBuilderFactoryBeanConfigurer.
StreamBuilderFactoryBeanCustomizerStreamsBuilderFactoryBeanConfigurer
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Makes auto-configurations final and removes public members.
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Drops support for Wavefront.
Wavefront
4.0.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Removes APIs that were deprecated for removal in 4.0 or earlier.
4.0.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Renames spring-boot-starter-kotlin-serialization to spring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-json and its test starter to spring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-json-test.
spring-boot-starter-kotlin-serializationspring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-jsonspring-boot-starter-kotlin-serialization-testspring-boot-starter-kotlinx-serialization-json-test
4.0.1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Using TestRestTemplate now requires a dependency on spring-boot-restclient.
TestRestTemplatespring-boot-restclient
4.0.1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Moves spring.jackson.datetime.<feature-name> to spring.jackson.datatype.datetime<feature-name>.
spring.jackson.datetime.<feature-name>spring.jackson.datatype.datetime<feature-name>
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Makes all type exclude filters package-private.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Makes ConfigDataLocation.of non-nullable.
ConfigDataLocation.of
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Makes SanitizableData.key non-nullable.
SanitizableData.key
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Always uses mongodb rather than mongo in MongoDB-related configuration properties.
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Updates Jackson support to require Jackson 3.
Jackson
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Replaces @OptionalParameter with JSpecify's @Nullable.
@OptionalParameter@Nullable
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Replaces ClientHttpRequestFactorySettings.Redirects with HttpRedirects.
ClientHttpRequestFactorySettings.RedirectsHttpRedirects
4.0.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Security1
Applies HTML escaping to the timestamp attribute in the Whitelabel error page.
4.0.7GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Platform5
Upgrades to jOOQ 3.20 and requires Java 21 to use it.
jOOQ
4.1.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Updates Neo4j support to require Neo4j Java Driver 6.0.0.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Raises the minimum supported version of the CycloneDX Gradle Plugin to 3.0.0.
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Raises the minimum supported version of Gradle to 8.14.
Gradle
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Adds support for Gradle 9.
Gradle
4.0.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source

Deprecations to plan for

Deprecated11
Marks SpringJtaPlatform as deprecated since 4.1.0-M3.
SpringJtaPlatform
4.1.0GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates OpenTelemetry's ZipkinSpanExporter, with support to be removed in Spring Boot 4.2.
ZipkinSpanExporter
4.1.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates LiveReload support for removal.
4.1.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates RootUriTemplateHandler in favor of DefaultUriBuilderFactory.
RootUriTemplateHandlerDefaultUriBuilderFactory
4.1.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Delays removal of Jackson 2 support until 4.3 at the earliest.
4.1.0-M2GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates Derby support since Apache Derby is retired.
Derby
4.1.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates OpenTelemetry's ZipkinSpanExporter, with support to be removed in Spring Boot 4.2.
ZipkinSpanExporter
4.0.4GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Delays removal of Jackson 2 support until 4.3 at the earliest.
4.0.3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Reintroduces the previous EnvironmentPostProcessor in deprecated form.
EnvironmentPostProcessor
4.0.0-RC1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates the JUnit 4 integration.
4.0.0-M3GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source
Deprecates ANT_PATH_MATCHER.
ANT_PATH_MATCHER
4.0.0-M1GitHub ReleaseSummarizedView source