Description
Following the modularization and restructing in 4.0, we're (not surprisingly) hearing that the role of the starters is now a little confusing. For example:
- it's not clear why some things have starters and others do not
- it's not clear when there is a starter if it should be used or if direct dependencies on one or more of the new modules should be used
For the first of these, the rule in the past has been that we only have a starter if it combines multiple dependencies. We should review the existing starters with this rule in mind as more of them may now be redundant. For example, spring-boot-starter-validation could be replaced with a dependency on spring-boot-validation and not much would have to change for spring-boot-security to be a replacement for spring-boot-starter-security.
For the second of these, I think we'll have to wait and see the outcome of reviewing the existing starters. That should help us to figure out if the starters are:
- purely for backwards compatibility
- still useful for cases when multiple dependencies are being combined
- something else