Java Module Support Delays for Spring Boot 3

Published on Oct 10, 2022

Oliver Drotbohm’s presentation – Spring Boot 3 and Spring Framework 6 – A New Generation – was one of the more timely presentations at JAX London 2022. According to Drotbohm, Spring Framework 6 and Spring Boot 3 are projected to be released at the end of November 2022. Additionally, he pointed out that Spring Boot Migrator, which was recently released, is capable of migrating Spring Boot 2.7 applications to version 3.0 and Spring Boot 2.6 applications to version 2.7. The migration to Spring Boot 3 is necessary because Spring Framework 6 uses Jakarta EE 9, which supports the Jakarta.* package namespace.

In addition to JDK 17, Drothbohm stressed the importance of native Java support in Spring Boot with GraalVM and built-in observability with Micrometer. The SpringOne conference, scheduled for December 6-8, 2022, will serve as a launchpad for Spring Framework 6 and Spring Boot 3.

Drotbohm did not mention the support for Java Platform Module System (JPMS) in Spring Framework 6, which was first reported last year. According to him, full JPMS support will not be included in Spring Framework 6.0, but may be added in the future

Spring Framework 5.3 and Spring Boot 2.7 will receive free support until May 2023 and extended commercial support until August 2025, respectively. Spring Framework 6 and Spring Boot 3 will receive one year of free support until November 2023, followed by an extended commercial support period until February 2025.

As with recent Spring Boot releases, Spring Boot 3 will be supported for one year. Earlier this year, reported that VMware had made it clear that Spring Framework users should upgrade to version 6 as soon as possible

The pace of upgrades for other Java frameworks is even faster. Quarkus, for example, releases feature updates about once a month, along with bug fixes.

In addition, Drohtbohm provided new insight into observability with Spring Framework 6 and Spring Boot 3. In spite of the fact that the Spring portfolio projects will be instrumented with a Micrometer, observability will be primarily visible at the infrastructure level (such as a request to a REST controller) for developers.

Currently, Spring contains 22 projects and supports a wide range of third-party libraries. Furthermore, Drotbohm noted that Spring Framework 6 and Spring Boot 3 may not fully support all of those projects and libraries with native Java and observability at launch. This will be addressed in future Spring releases.