Modules

Spring Framework is published as ~22 separately versioned JARs, each corresponding to a spring-* directory in this repository. Applications depend only on the modules they need; transitive dependencies pull in the rest.

This section documents each published module: its purpose, its key abstractions, and where to look in the code.

Module catalog

Foundation

• spring-core — Utilities, Resource abstraction, Environment, type system, AOT primitives
• spring-beans — BeanDefinition, BeanFactory, property-binding machinery
• spring-aop — Proxy-based AOP (JDK + CGLIB)
• spring-aspects — AspectJ-woven aspects for @Transactional, @Async, @Cacheable
• spring-expression — Spring Expression Language (SpEL)
• spring-context — ApplicationContext, annotation-driven configuration, events, scheduling, validation
• spring-context-support — Quartz, JavaMail, cache providers
• spring-context-indexer — Compile-time component index
• spring-instrument — JVM agent for class instrumentation (LTW)

Data access

• spring-jdbc — JdbcTemplate, DataSource utilities, exception translation
• spring-tx — Transaction management abstraction (PlatformTransactionManager, @Transactional)
• spring-orm — JPA / Hibernate / iBatis (legacy) integration
• spring-r2dbc — Reactive R2DBC integration
• spring-oxm — Object/XML marshalling (JAXB, others)

Web

• spring-web — HTTP primitives shared by both web stacks
• spring-webmvc — Servlet-based MVC framework
• spring-webflux — Reactive web framework
• spring-websocket — WebSocket and STOMP support

Messaging

• spring-messaging — Generic messaging abstraction (used by JMS, AMQP, STOMP)
• spring-jms — JMS support and listener container

Test

• spring-test — TestContext framework, MockMvc, WebTestClient, Servlet/Reactive mocks
• spring-core-test — Test helpers consumed by other framework modules

Aggregates and platform (framework-*)

The framework-* directories are not published as code modules but support packaging and documentation:

• framework-api — Aggregated multi-module Javadoc (./gradlew :framework-api:javadoc)
• framework-bom — Bill of Materials (Maven BOM) constraining all org.springframework:* versions
• framework-docs — Reference documentation source (Asciidoctor + Antora)
• framework-platform — Gradle-style enforced platform for transitive dependency management

Cross-module relationships

For a visual of how modules depend on each other, see overview/architecture. For cross-cutting features that span multiple modules, see features/.