Custom spring boot starter for specifying distribution management

Question

We have a spring boot application which has its parent defined as spring-boot-starter-parent. But in our project, we have a parent pom with distribution management defined in it, and all the submodules in the project inherit from it. Now, since the spring boot application already inherits from spring-boot-starter-parent, and I do not want to duplicate the distribution management, I thought of having a custom spring boot starter module just to be able to define the distribution management in there and then include this custom spring boot starter as a dependency in the spring boot application. But when I do a mvn clean install deploy of the spring boot application it fails with the error shown below:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-deploy-plugin:2.8.
2:deploy (default-deploy) on project crs-acc-eve-gridgain-load-app: Deployment f
ailed: repository element was not specified in the POM inside distributionManage
ment element or in -DaltDeploymentRepository=id::layout::url parameter -> [Help
1]

Is it the right way to achieve this? or there any other recommended ways of doing it?

Given below are the poms of custom spring boot starter parent module:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <parent>
        <artifactId>crs-micro-services</artifactId>
        <groupId>com.ing.crs</groupId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </parent>
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <artifactId>crs-spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <packaging>pom</packaging>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <spring-boot.version>1.3.5.RELEASE</spring-boot.version>
    </properties>
    <modules>
        <module>crs-spring-boot-starter</module>
    </modules>
    <dependencyManagement>
        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-dependencies</artifactId>
                <version>${spring-boot.version}</version>
                <type>pom</type>
                <scope>import</scope>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>
    <distributionManagement>
        <repository>
            <id>XXXX</id>
            <name>XXXX</name>
            <url>XXXX</url>
        </repository>
        <snapshotRepository>
            <id>XXXX</id>
            <name>XXXX</name>
            <url>XXXX</url>
            <uniqueVersion>false</uniqueVersion>
        </snapshotRepository>
    </distributionManagement>

</project>

And this..for the starter module

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <parent>
        <artifactId>crs-spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <groupId>com.ing.crs</groupId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </parent>
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <artifactId>crs-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

</project>

And the sprng boot application has this dependency

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.ing.crs</groupId>
        <artifactId>crs-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <scope>import</scope>
    </dependency>

Thanks and regards, Priya

Stephane Nicoll Stephane Nicoll · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-31T12:58:50

There is no requirement that your build should be configured with the spring-boot-starter-parent. If you already have a parent with some distribution management, feel free to keep it. You'll need to adapt the parent a bit. Here are couple of options:

If the whole project is spring boot based, maybe your parent could inherit from the Spring Boot starter parent? This may not work if you have a parent that is used within the entire organization
You can keep your parent as it is and use the spring-boot-dependencies BOM instead. See the documentation for more details. You'll have to copy the bits of the parent that you use (such as the plugin definition) but it's not a ton of work.

Your proposal will never work. BOM only imports <dependencyManagement>. What you're looking for is mixin and it's not supported by Maven yet.

Custom spring boot starter for specifying distribution management

1 Answers