Cross-reference Dedicated Spring Boot BOM for Consistent Resolution

[Fleshgrinder]

All Spring Boot (actually all Spring projects, but let us start with Boot) modules should be collected in a dedicated Spring Boot BOM that is then cross-references by every module. This would in turn ensure consistent resolution of all dependencies within a dependency tree. Well, at least on Gradle. According to @wilkinsona this does not work in Maven, I do not know, but even if it is Gradle only it is providing substantial value.

This screenshot illustrates consistent resolution of Jackson dependencies. This is made possible by the Jackson developers because they cross-reference their own BOM in every module of theirs, e.g.:

https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-annotations/blob/082ee2812f0a7019516181947e591d8ed624425a/pom.xml#L129-L137

The same is possible in Gradle, example build setup:

project(":bom") {
    apply<JavaPlatformPlugin>()
    dependencies {
        constraints {
            api(project(":a"))
            api(project(":b"))
        }
    }
}

project(":a") {
    apply<JavaLibraryPlugin>()
    dependencies {
        api(platform(project(":bom")))
    }
}

project(":b") {
    apply<JavaLibraryPlugin>()
    dependencies {
        api(platform(project(":bom")))
    }
}

I am happy to help with this if there is interest.

[wakingrufus]

I think this request also implies the existence of a spring boot bom, similar to the spring framework bom (https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework/spring-framework-bom) which only references the spring boot modules, and not the dependencies. This would be a useful artifact to have, even without the "reference" requirement from the original request here.