The Spring Boot starter parent is a Maven parent POM for Spring projects. It supplies dependency management, allowing supported libraries to inherit compatible versions instead of declaring each version manually. section 1.2.2
Listing 1.1 The initial Maven build specification
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><project
xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>2.5.3</version> #1
<relativePath />
</parent>
<groupId>sia</groupId>
<artifactId>taco-cloud</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<name>taco-cloud</name>
<description>Taco Cloud Example</description>
<properties>
<java.version>11</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency> #2
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
<optional>true</optional>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>org.junit.vintage</groupId>
<artifactId>junit-vintage-engine</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin> #3
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>spring-milestones</id>
<name>Spring Milestones</name>
<url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
</repository>
</repositories>
<pluginRepositories>
<pluginRepository>
<id>spring-milestones</id>
<name>Spring Milestones</name>
<url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
</pluginRepository>
</pluginRepositories>
</project>
Use the complete Maven build specification to see the parent declaration, Spring Boot version, Java property, and starter dependencies together. section 1.2.2
Taco Cloud Maven parent
A generated project declares org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-parent as its parent and sets a Spring Boot version such as 2.5.3. Dependencies covered by that parent can omit their own version numbers. Spring Initializr supplies this structure when Maven is selected. section 1.2.2
