Upgrade to Spring Boot `2.7.18`

I understand that CloudEvents is firmly rooted on a Java 8 baseline.

It is also true that the entire Spring Boot 2.x generation is based on Java 8 (see here).

CloudEvents' Spring integration significantly lags behind at version 2.4.3, and not even the latest 2.4.x release at that (which is 2.4.13). Although, it is a moot point given 2.4.x as been out of OSS (2021-11-18) and Commercial (2023-02-23) Support for some time now (click "more" to expand the list).

Technically, even Spring Boot 2.7.x is out of OSS support, as of 2023-06-30. While Commercial support does not end until 2029-06-30, it does require users/customers to buy a commercial license to contract the Spring team to patch the 2.7.x release line. Without commercial support, there will simply be no more patch (maintenance) releases to the 2.7.x release line.

It is strongly recommended to upgrade to, or at least provide a version of CloudEvents for, Spring Boot 3.x, based on Java 17.

Java 17 is a LTS version, as is Java 21. Java 24 is already available. Spring Boot 4.0 is on the horizon.

Per prima cosa stabilire se l’obiettivo è Spring Boot 2.7.18 o una release compatibile con Spring Boot 3.x; l’issue descrive entrambe le direzioni. Esaminare il pom.xml nella root e spring/pom.xml, quindi eseguire la build Maven e i test esistenti per individuare il lavoro di compatibilità necessario. Il lavoro è completato quando la versione di Spring Boot scelta è dichiarata in modo coerente e il progetto viene compilato correttamente e i test hanno esito positivo.