Spring Boot 2.4.0 Released: New Cloud‑Native Features You Should Know

Spring Boot 2.4.0 has been officially released and is available from the Maven Central repository, using a new version scheme without the RELEASE suffix.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-dependencies</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.0</version>
    <type>pom</type>
    <scope>import</scope>
</dependency>

New version feature list

Full support for Java 15, while the minimum supported version remains Java 8.

New configuration file handling mechanism (see “Spring Boot 2.4 Configuration File Loading Changes”).

Default support for layered JARs, reducing container image builds.

Automatic JAR optimization that removes empty starters.

Docker/Buildpack image building support, no longer requiring plugins such as fabric8.

@ConfigurationProperties can now use @Name as an alias for property injection.

New property spring.config.import allows importing files, directories, or Kubernetes configtree properties.

Added startup endpoint to display the application’s startup steps, helping diagnose bean initialization time issues.

Embedded database detection improved; H2 and Derby are considered embedded only when in‑memory.

New CRON scheduling support

LogBack configuration changes.

Full adoption of JUnit 5, removing JUnit 4 dependencies.

Default servlet registration removed; DispatcherServlet is now the default dependency.

HTTP request endpoint tracing no longer includes cookie headers.

Undertow request forwarding no longer retains the original URL.

Neo4j driver improvements with many properties removed.

Older Elasticsearch versions will not trigger Spring Boot auto‑configuration, preventing startup errors.

R2DBC module moved to spring-r2dbc.

Flatten Maven plugin removed.

exec‑maven‑plugin for version management removed.

@SpringBootTest no longer configures monitoring; add @AutoConfigureMetrics to export metrics.

Redis cache metrics now displayed, similar to application‑level redis info.

H2 embedded database now supports configuring admin console username and password.

Support for Apache Cassandra health checks.

Core dependency upgrades

Spring Framework 5.3
Spring AMQP 2.3
Spring Batch 4.3
Spring Data 2020.0
Spring HATEOAS 1.2
Spring Integration 5.4
Spring Kafka 2.6
Spring Retry 1.3
Spring Security 5.4
Spring Session 2020.0