SpringBoot Starter projects should verify that their runtime classpath can be resolved

One of the verification tests for start.spring.io is failing at the moment:

[ERROR] dependencyStarterConfigurationIsCorrect{Dependency, List, List, String}[9]  Time elapsed: 2.183 s  <<< ERROR!
java.lang.RuntimeException: org.eclipse.aether.resolution.DependencyResolutionException: Failed to collect dependencies at org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-hateoas:pom:2.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT
    at io.spring.start.site.MetadataVerificationTests.dependencyStarterConfigurationIsCorrect(MetadataVerificationTests.java:78)
Caused by: org.eclipse.aether.resolution.DependencyResolutionException: Failed to collect dependencies at org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-hateoas:pom:2.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT
    at io.spring.start.site.MetadataVerificationTests.dependencyStarterConfigurationIsCorrect(MetadataVerificationTests.java:78)
Caused by: org.eclipse.aether.collection.DependencyCollectionException: Failed to collect dependencies at org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-hateoas:pom:2.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT
    at io.spring.start.site.MetadataVerificationTests.dependencyStarterConfigurationIsCorrect(MetadataVerificationTests.java:78)
Caused by: org.eclipse.aether.resolution.ArtifactDescriptorException: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-hateoas:pom:2.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT
    at io.spring.start.site.MetadataVerificationTests.dependencyStarterConfigurationIsCorrect(MetadataVerificationTests.java:78)
Caused by: org.apache.maven.model.building.ModelBuildingException: 
1 problem was encountered while building the effective model for org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-hateoas:2.3.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT
[ERROR] 'dependencies.dependency.version' for org.springframework.plugin:spring-plugin-core:jar is missing. @ 
    at io.spring.start.site.MetadataVerificationTests.dependencyStarterConfigurationIsCorrect(MetadataVerificationTests.java:78)

This is due to spring-boot-starter-hateoas having a dependency on org.springframework.plugin:spring-plugin-core and there being no dependency management for it. The dependency shouldn't be there any more but this change was lost in the Gradle migration. We should:

add something to the plugin for the starter projects that verifies that the runtime classpath can be resolved
check that it fails when building the HATEOAS starter
remove the dependency on spring-plugin-core

Comment From: wilkinsona

I'm not sure if this is possible. Gradle takes the direct dependency on org.springframework.plugin:spring-plugin-core and the transitive dependency on org.springframework.plugin:spring-plugin-core:2.0.0.RELEASE and picks 2.0.0.RELEASE. There's no resolution failure. We might be able to check that we have a version constraint for it.

Comment From: wilkinsona

I've opened https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/19874 to fix the starter.

Comment From: gregturn

@wilkinsona Does this ticket need to be closed given the underlying issue was resolved?

Comment From: wilkinsona

No. We'd still like to add some verification to the build so that we catch this sort of problem automatically.