why are the github projects of spring-boot-starter projects empty?

Question

On looking at the spring-boot-starter-web, spring-boot-starter-security projects on github, i find them to be empty with just a build.gradle file present there.

I hope this is as expected, but this leads me to understand where the actual source code can be found. And I use maven, so I was expecting atleast a pom.xml in these projects. But since it is not present, I am wondering how spring boot team publishes there artifacts to maven central repo.

Tiu

plz, if you like the Q. Upvote it. The accepted answer below from spring boot developer @andy-wilkinson is quite detailed. Thx. – Tiu

Answer 1

I hope this is as expected

This is as expected. Spring Boot's starter modules exist purely to being multiple dependencies together into a convenient "package". For example, if you want to write a Servlet-based web application using Spring MVC and Tomcat, a single dependency on spring-boot-starter-web provides all of the dependencies that you need. You can learn a bit more about the starters in the reference documentation.

Where the actual source code can be found

The majority of the code can be found in spring-boot-autoconfigure. For more production-focused features, you'll also find some code in spring-boot-actuator-autoconfigure. The code in these two modules is activated automatically when the dependencies that it requires are on the classpath. You can learn more about this conditional activation and auto-configuration in the reference documentation.

And I use maven, so I was expecting atleast a pom.xml in these projects. But since it is not present, I am wondering how spring boot team publishes there artifacts to maven central repo.

Spring Boot is built with Gradle which, unlike Maven, completely separates the configuration needed by the build system to build the project and the information needed by a build system to consume the project. The build.gradle files provide all of the information that Gradle needs to build the project. As part of this, it generates Gradle module metadata files and Maven pom.xml files that contain all of the information needed to consume the project with Gradle and Maven respectively. These generated files are then published to Maven Central alongside the jar files, source code, etc.

Chios