How to use spring boot in gradle without the spring boot gradle plugin - spring-boot

Question

Can anyone show me or point me to a spring boot gradle project that does not make use of the spring boot gradle plugin.
I'm looking for something like a spring boot starter web hello world example that doesn't use the gradle plugin.
I can't imagine that the plugin is a requirement, but a search for examples all seem to lean on the gradle plugin, which lets just say is not an option in my environment, and no I can't switch to maven either.
Ideally the gradle build would work by adding something like the following:
gradle.properties
springBootVersion=2.1.3.RELEASE
build.gradle
dependencies {
compile group: 'org.springframework.boot', name: 'spring-boot-starter-web', version: springBootVersion
}

Answer 1

I used the spring dependency management plugin, and it works
buildscript {
ext {
springDepManagementVersion = '1.0.10.RELEASE'
springBootVersion = '2.6.6'
springCloudVersion = "2021.0.1"
}
dependencies {
classpath "io.spring.gradle:dependency-management-plugin:${springDepManagementVersion}"
}
}
apply plugin: 'io.spring.dependency-management'
dependencyManagement {
imports {
mavenBom "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-dependencies:${springCloudVersion}"
mavenBom "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-dependencies:${springBootVersion}"
}
}
dependencies {
implementation "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-sleuth"
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-json'
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-mail'
implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security'
...
}
I can't use spring boot gradle plugin, since I can only use gradle 6.7.1, while spring boot gradle plugin requires gradle version at least 6.8 to support spring boot 2.6. I was inspired by the spring cloud bom solution.