Dependencies and Scopes

Adding a Dependency

Find the coordinates (start.spring.io, mvnrepository.com, or the library docs), paste them into <dependencies>, and reload the project in your IDE. Example: the MySQL driver (version managed by Boot):

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.mysql</groupId>
    <artifactId>mysql-connector-j</artifactId>
    <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

Scopes

Scope	Available when	Example
`compile` (default)	compiling, testing and running	`spring-boot-starter-web`
`runtime`	running and testing, not compiling	JDBC drivers, DevTools
`test`	only in `src/test`	`spring-boot-starter-test` (JUnit 5, Mockito, AssertJ)
`provided`	compiling; the server supplies it at runtime	servlet API when deploying a WAR to external Tomcat

Transitive Dependencies

Example

You add one starter, Maven pulls in its dependencies too. See the tree with:

./mvnw dependency:tree

Example output

[INFO] com.shopease:shopease:jar:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] +- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:jar:3.5.6:compile
[INFO] |  +- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter:jar:3.5.6:compile
[INFO] |  |  +- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-logging:jar:3.5.6:compile
[INFO] |  |  |  \- ch.qos.logback:logback-classic:jar:1.5.18:compile
[INFO] |  +- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-json:jar:3.5.6:compile
[INFO] |  |  \- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:jar:2.19.2:compile
[INFO] |  +- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat:jar:3.5.6:compile
[INFO] |  |  \- org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed-core:jar:10.1.46:compile
[INFO] |  \- org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:6.2.11:compile
[INFO] \- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test:jar:3.5.6:test

Reading Coordinates in Plain Java

Example

Coordinates are often written in short form group:artifact:version (Gradle uses this). A small parser:

import java.util.List;

public class Main {
    record Coordinates(String groupId, String artifactId, String version) {
        static Coordinates parse(String gav) {
            String[] parts = gav.split(":");
            if (parts.length != 3) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Expected group:artifact:version but got " + gav);
            return new Coordinates(parts[0], parts[1], parts[2]);
        }
        boolean isSnapshot() { return version.endsWith("-SNAPSHOT"); }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        List<String> deps = List.of(
            "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:3.5.6",
            "com.mysql:mysql-connector-j:9.4.0",
            "com.shopease:shopease:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT");
        for (String d : deps) {
            Coordinates c = Coordinates.parse(d);
            System.out.printf("%-28s %-30s %-15s snapshot=%b%n", c.groupId(), c.artifactId(), c.version(), c.isSnapshot());
        }
    }
}

Output

org.springframework.boot     spring-boot-starter-web        3.5.6           snapshot=false
com.mysql                    mysql-connector-j              9.4.0           snapshot=false
com.shopease                 shopease                       0.0.1-SNAPSHOT  snapshot=true