Requirements

Build-time requirements

These apply to the project that uses Sprout (your application, not Sprout’s own build):

Requirement	Minimum
JDK	21+
Maven	3.9+ (if using Maven)
Gradle	Any modern version that supports annotationProcessor configuration

Sprout’s annotation processor is compiled with maven.compiler.release=21 and declares @SupportedSourceVersion(RELEASE_21). You must compile your application with JDK 21 or later.

Runtime requirements

Generated code is standard Spring Boot code. You need the usual Spring Boot stack:

Dependency	Version
Spring Boot	3.5.x or later
spring-boot-starter-web	for the generated @RestController
spring-boot-starter-data-jpa	for the generated JpaRepository
A JPA provider (e.g. Hibernate) and a database driver	as normal

Optional runtime requirements

These are only needed when you use the corresponding Sprout features:

Feature	Required dependency
Bean validation on POST/PUT (@Valid)	spring-boot-starter-validation
@SproutPolicy security expressions	spring-boot-starter-security
authenticationPrincipal = true	spring-boot-starter-security
OpenAPI / Swagger docs	springdoc-openapi-starter-webmvc-ui (or equivalent SpringDoc artifact)
Unified error handling + security autoconfig	sprout-runtime

Tip

If a required optional dependency is missing, Sprout degrades gracefully: it logs a compile-time warning and generates the controller without the missing annotation (@ApiResponses, @PreAuthorize, etc.). Your app still compiles and runs; only the optional feature is absent.

Caution

If authenticationPrincipal = true is set and Spring Security is not on the compile classpath, the generated controller will reference org.springframework.security.core.Authentication and your project will not compile. Either add Spring Security or leave authenticationPrincipal at its default (false).