What is Maven <parent> in Gradle?

Question

On a maven project I have the tag:

  <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT</version>
    </parent>

What is Gradle's syntax for that?

This is my build.gradle currently. Im thinking this would need to be added on the build script, maybe replacing what I currently have. If possible, please explain why I would need to add it. I am trying to translate a pom.xml to gradle.

buildscript {
    ext {
        springBootVersion = '1.5.9.RELEASE'
    }
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:1.5.9.RELEASE")
    }
}

plugins {
    id 'org.springframework.boot' version '1.5.9.RELEASE'
    id 'java'
}


repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

/*Runtime dependencies*/
dependencies {
    testCompile group: 'junit', name: 'junit', version: '4.12'
    compile("io.springfox:springfox-swagger2:2.6.1")
    compile("io.springfox:springfox-swagger-ui:2.6.1")
    compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter')
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-rest")
}

Answer 1

In Gradle you only have a parent->child relationship in a multi-module project. You do not have a child->parent definition as you have in Maven.

So you usually have a parent folder where you have a settings.gradle that contains the references to its children.

Like so (parent settings.gradle):

include 'sub-module-1'
include 'sub-module-2

Then you have two sub-folder sub-module-1 and sub-module-2 which contains their own build.gradle files.

But, coming back to your case, you don't need to have any of that when you are just using the spring-boot plugin org.springframework.boot plugin will configure all the necessary dependencies so you only need to add the optional dependencies you want.