Spring Boot for older version of java

Question

I am looking to create a new web application using spring boot. Unfortunately my server is fairly locked down in terms of the technology stack. It has java 5 installed on it.

Can anyone tell me whether spring boot can run on java 1.5 and what version?

thanks

Answer 1

Since Spring boot 1.0.0, the minimal requirement to run a Spring boot application has been Java 6. This can also be found in the reference guide of Spring boot 1.0.0:

Spring Boot can be used with “classic” Java development tools or installed as a command line tool. Regardless, you will need Java SDK v1.6 or higher.

Support for older Java versions has been dropped throughout releases, with Spring boot 1.3 moving to Java 7 as a baseline (still possible to use Java 6 with additional configuration) and Spring boot 2.x moving to Java 8 as a baseline. Additionally to what the documentation says, none of the Spring boot 1.x versions support Java 9 or higher.

Summarized:

• 1.0.0: Support from Java 6 - 8
• 1.3.0: Support from Java 7 - 8, additional configuration for Java 6 required
• 2.0.0: Support from Java 8 - ...

So, the answer is that it's not possible to run in Java 5.

Answer 2

For Spring Boot 2.0, the requirement is Java 8 as a minimum version.

From the Spring Boot 2.0 release notes :

Spring Boot 2.0 requires Java 8 as a minimum version. Many existing APIs have been updated to take advantage of Java 8 features such as: default methods on interfaces, functional callbacks, and new APIs such as javax.time. If you are currently using Java 7 or earlier, you’ll need to upgrade your JDK before you can develop Spring Boot 2.0 applications.