Buildship 2.0 and Spring STS 3.8.3

Spring STS 3.8.3 doesn't work well with Buildship 2.0 Gradle plugin. When you try to create a new Spring starter project with Buildship Gradle plugin selected, you will get the following error,

can not import using Gradle (Buildship) because Buildship Gradle Tooling is not installed. You can install it from Eclipse Marketplace.

Note that you will get this error even after installing Buildship 2.0 from the Eclipse marketplace. This is actually an STS bug since it had a Buildship version dependency built into it. Luckily this bug is fixed in the upcoming STS 3.8.4 release.

There are two solutions to this problem. You can either get a nightly build of the upcoming STS 3.8.4 release or you can install an older version of the Buildship plug-in.

Option 1: Installing Nightly Build of STS 3.8.4

The quickest solution to the above bug is to install the latest nightly build of the upcoming STS 3.8.4 release. The only downside of this approach is that 3.8.4 itself may have other bugs! To install the nightly build in Spring STS, click on Help => Install New Software. In the work with field, add the URL to the Spring STS nightly build for Eclipse Neon. Install the updates listed.

Option 2: Installing Older Version of Buildship

If you have Buildship 2.0 already installed, uninstall it from Help => Installation Details. Then click on Help => Install New Software. In the work with field, add the URL to the Buildship 1.0.21 plug-in for Eclipse Neon. Install the Buildship 1.0.21 version listed. Voila! Now you can create Spring starter projects using Buildship.

References

Bug report in GitHub