Integrate Spring Boot in an EAR project

You need a parent project that includes a war project, which will be your spring boot project, and an ear project just for making your ear.

Parent will need to have the spring boot as its parent :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

 <parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.4.3.RELEASE</version>
  </parent>

  <groupId>com.greg</groupId>
  <artifactId>ear-example</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>pom</packaging>

  <properties>
        <myproject.version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</myproject.version>
  </properties>

  <name>ear-example</name>
  <modules>
    <module>example-ear</module>
    <module>example-war</module>
  </modules>

</project>

Your ear project is:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd" xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <parent>
    <groupId>com.greg</groupId>
    <artifactId>ear-example</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </parent>

  <artifactId>example-ear</artifactId>
  <packaging>ear</packaging>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.greg</groupId>
      <artifactId>example-war</artifactId>
      <version>${project.version}</version>
      <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

  <build>
   <plugins>
     <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.10.1</version>
        <configuration>
                <modules>
                        <webModule>
                                <groupId>com.greg</groupId>
                                <artifactId>example-war</artifactId>
                                <contextRoot>/appname</contextRoot>
                        </webModule>
                </modules>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

</project>

You have to use the dependency management system.

It allows you to set the parent of Spring Boot WAR module project to the different from the spring-boot-starter-parent. Then it's would be possible to include the WAR project into the EAR one in the same way like any other.

<dependencyManagement>
     <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <!-- Import dependency management from Spring Boot -->
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-dependencies</artifactId>
            <version>1.5.2.RELEASE</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

... now you can use all the Spring Boot starter dependencies in the usual way:

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

The starter dependencies you've to specify at the module projects level, while the dependency management configuration may be specified at the both ones - around the whole EAR projects or individually on each of them, depending on the app requirements.

Using Spring Boot without the parent POM