My Spring Explorer only shows Beans -> Application and nothing else. When I was just running Eclipse and had added in the STS plugin, I was able to see more Spring information, including Configuration files, Controllers, and RequestMappings.
I've even tried with a fresh install and with a Spring getting started guide instead of my own project, but I get the same result:
1) I've downloaded and installed a fresh copy of STS 3.6.3.
2) Then from the dashboard I clicked Manage: IDE Extensions and installed Gradle Support and restarted STS.
3) I went to File - Import - Spring Getting Started Content
4) I selected Rest Service and selected the Build Type of Gradle.
5) Now in Spring Explorer I see: gs-rest-service-complete - Beans - Application (and gs-rest-service-initial is empty)
For this example, I expect to see the GreetingController (a @RestController) and its @RequestMapping. How can I get it to show me the tree with all the other Spring elements?
(Note that there was a bug fix for 3.6.3 that should show RequestMappings for RestController - https://issuetracker.springsource.com/browse/STS-3751 so perhaps this is a regression issue instead of me doing something wrong)
If I go to Properties - Spring - Beans Support - the default is to have "Auto detection for Spring Boot configuration files" checked. I get the same results for unchecking that and instead checking "Auto detection for annotated Java Spring configuration files". The Config Sets panel is empty. The Config Files panel lists Application. Neither of the two checkboxes below are checked now - neither changed anything when I tried them. Clicking Scan... just loads an empty and disabled panel with the error note "No entries available."
I tried it (with maven instead of Gradle, but it shouldn't make a difference). I get the same behavior as you describe but... the expected elements (RestController with request mappings) do show up after I clean/build the project.
So I think that:
Probably this is the bug in question: https://issuetracker.springsource.com/browse/STS-3541
It is shown as still 'unresolved' at the moment.