Spring Dependency Hell: Understanding the Risks and Best Practices to Avoid Them

Dependency hell is a common issue that can occur in Spring-based applications when there are conflicts between different versions of dependencies. It can be a frustrating problem to solve because it can be difficult to identify the cause of the conflict and resolve it.

Dependency Hell is a situation where resolving an initial error in an application’s environment leads to the discovery of additional errors. Typically, these errors manifest in the form of dependency conflicts, circular dependencies, or diamond dependencies.

1. Dependency conflicts arise when two software packages require the same dependency, but each package demands a different version of that dependency.
2. Circular dependencies occur when package A depends on a specific version of package B, and package B, in turn, depends on a specific version of package A. Upgrading one package can cause the other package to break.
3. Diamond dependencies arise when a conflict exists deep within the dependency tree, such as when multiple dependencies rely on a sub-dependency, but each one requires a different version of that sub-dependency.

Software development involves dependencies which are typically unavoidable. However, they can lead to the risk of dependency…