How to get Spring Explorer view in Eclipse 2018-12 with Spring Tool Suite 4 installed?

Question

In the past, I've directly installed the Spring Tool Suite, and I remember seeing the graphical "Spring Explorer" view, that graphically rendered my Spring Bean references.

For a while now, I've been installing the stock Eclipse distro, and then installing STS from the marketplace.

I'm now using Eclipse 2018-12, with the latest STS from the marketplace, and now I realize that I don't have an option to display this "Spring Explorer" view.

How can I graphically display Spring bean references in Eclipse 2018-12 with the latest STS installed?

Answer 1

There is no Spring Explorer view in Spring Tools 4 ( STS4 ).

See the closed STS4 issue #23 - No more Spring Perspective neither Spring Explorer? , comment by project lead Martin Lippert :

The STS4 distribution takes a fresh start with many things and therefore doesn't include the Spring perspective and the Spring explorer anymore.

The Spring Explorer will be replaced with the new "go to symbol" infrastructure that provides a much faster and more lightweight way to get an overview of your Spring elements in your project. And since the Spring Explorer was the main difference between the Java and the Spring perspective, we decided to not configure a specialized Spring perspective anymore. In addition to that the "go to symbol" infrastructure is available independent of the chosen perspective.

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The discussion here was moved to the issue mentioned above (with replies from the project lead Martin Lippert).