Problems setting up Spring security in existing MVC project - spring

Question

I'm trying to add Spring security to an existing Spring MVC project. I'm using this as a guide:
http://docs.spring.io/spring-security/site/docs/current/guides/html5//hellomvc.html
However, I can't get the project to display the login screen. I copied SecurityConfig.java and MessageSecurityWebApplicationInitializer.java verbatim, when I turn boot logging to DEBUG, I see this:
o.s.b.c.e.ServletContextInitializerBeans : Created Filter initializer for bean 'springSecurityFilterChain'; order=2147483647, resource=class path resource [org/springframework/security/config/annotation/web/configuration/WebSecurityConfiguration.class]
Which suggests that MessageSecurityWebApplicationInitializer is never being looked at. Sure enough, if I create a default constructor and set a breakpoint, it's never getting hit.
Interestingly, SecurityConfig.configureGlobal is called, which seems like the call that should be setting up the login screen.
So what steps need to happen to make MessageSecurityWebApplicationInitializer do its thing? I'm still trying to understand how Spring handles dependency injection, etc.--what about this class declaration should cause this to get picked up during boot (I would have expected some sort of annotation):
public class MessageSecurityWebApplicationInitializer
extends AbstractSecurityWebApplicationInitializer {
}
I can't share much other code unfortunately, but this is the Application file:
#ComponentScan(basePackages={"..."})
#EnableAutoConfiguration(exclude={DataSourceAutoConfiguration.class, SpringBootWebSecurityConfiguration.class})
#Configuration
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
/**
* The main() method is required by the framework.
*
* #param args
* #throws IOException
*/
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}
The one thing that the sample has that this project doesn't is the MessageWebApplicationInitializer class, but to me it looks like that functionality should be picked up by my Application class.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You must add annotations #Configuration and #EnableWebSecurity to your MessageSecurityWebApplicationInitializer and take care that its picked up by spring. Than it should work.

Answer 2

So it turns out the problem was these lines in my gradle build:
compile(group: "org.springframework.boot", name: "spring-boot-starter-actuator", version: "1.2.3.RELEASE")
compile(group: "org.springframework.boot", name: "spring-boot-starter-web", version: "1.2.3.RELEASE")
compile(group: "org.springframework.boot", name: "spring-boot-starter-test", version: "1.2.3.RELEASE")
compile(group: "org.springframework.boot", name: "spring-boot-starter-jdbc", version: "1.2.3.RELEASE")
It would be great if anyone could shed some insight into why these lines would break the security setup.