What is the relationship between Spring Boot and Spring IO?

Question

Spring has a new project called spring IO http://platform.spring.io/platform/ and it is not really clear what is the difference between that project and Spring Boot.

I am already a spring boot user but can't tell if I should be using SpringIO or just continue on with Spring Boot.

Am I missing anything if I just sing Spring Boot and Ignore Spring IO?

I have read through the documentation for Spring IO but the answers to the above questions are still unclear.

Answer 1

Spring IO provides a superset of the dependencies managed by the Spring Boot starter-dependencies. Spring IO level-sets the dependencies across the various Spring projects, but no additional runtime requirements. It is not, in that sense, a project so much as very convenient dependency management solution.

Spring IO is a logical construct - you can think of the various pieces as being part of this larger, managed platform. This does not require you to use all of the libraries, of course. Please check out the announcement blog for more details.

If you want to consume the Spring Boot starter dependencies, then there's no reason to change. If you're using other Spring projects, without the benefit of the Spring Boot starter dependencies, then the Spring IO platform is tailor-made for you.

Answer 2

Spring boot offers you many dependency-set to enable features, it will include dependencies (properly) in your classpath. On the other hand, Spring IO offers you NO dependencies at all, it can only help you to manage your dependencies(like to manage your dependency versions), if you need any dependency or dependency-set(e.g. via spring boot), you need to help yourself and add them manually.