What is the difference between Spring Boot Starter and a regular library?

Spring Boot Starter is a special type of dependency (artifact) that simplifies the integration and configuration of a set of related libraries in a Spring Boot project. Unlike a regular library, starters contain pre-configured dependencies and configurations, allowing you to quickly start working with specific functionality without manually specifying all the necessary libraries and settings.

For example, by adding the spring-boot-starter-web dependency to your pom.xml, you automatically include all the necessary libraries for creating a web application (Tomcat, Spring MVC, etc.) and get a basic configuration.

Thus, starters are a convenient way to assemble and configure a set of libraries for a specific task, reducing the time and errors in project setup.