Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.0.5 and 3.2.9 have been released. Both of those are designed as a final feature release in the respective line - we will only consider further releases from the 4.0.x and 3.2.x branches in case of serious bugs now.

http://projects.spring.io/spring-framework/

Spring Framework 3.2.9 comes with a repackaged ASM 5.0.2 and is therefore capable of basic Java 8 bytecode processing. However, specific Java 8 feature support - JSR-310 date-time, repeatable annotations, etc - is exclusive to the Spring Framework 4.x line.

SPR…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.0.4 is now available. This is a straightforward maintenance release after 4.0.3, primarily fixing regressions and other recent bugs. It also comes with a range of minor dependency updates (including ASM 5.0.2).

http://projects.spring.io/spring-framework/

Aside from working towards our 4.1 release in July, we intend to do a 4.0.5 & 3.2.9 pair of releases in late May. Both of the latter are the last planned releases in the respective line. So if you have any critical bug reports to consider for those branches still…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.0.3 is available. This is the first release of the framework after Java 8's launch last week; it is built with OpenJDK 8 GA now and includes the latest ASM 5.0.1 (with bytecode support at the JDK 8 GA level as well, superseding the custom ASM 4.2 fork that we were previously using).

http://projects.spring.io/spring-framework/

Spring Framework 4.0.3 also comes with significant enhancements in the WebSocket space, with a lot of real-life feedback incorporated back into the framework and its configuration options. It's…

With the GA release of Java 8 finally having arrived this week, let's all rejoice and celebrate - and then wake up and wonder how to introduce this to our everyday work environments...

This is easy enough to do for prototyping purposes: grab a JDK 8 download, IntelliJ IDEA or Eclipse's recently completed Java 8 support, and off you go. The challenging part comes a step later: You need to figure out how to deploy your app to a Java 8 enabled environment.

Of course, in practice, that consideration probably comes much earlier: Before you're willing or allowed to try Java 8, you need to have a…

After this week's 4.0.1 release, I'd like to take the opportunity to point out our recently revised migration guide on GitHub: That document contains a lot of detailed system requirements etc for your migration to the Spring Framework 4 line. If you haven't already, now is a great time to give this a try, since the 4.0.1 release contains fixes for all known production-impacting issues that have been reported against the 4.0 GA release.

I'd particularly like to invite all WebSphere users to give the upgrade a try. We carefully designed Spring Framework 4 to be compatible with WebSphere 7.0.0.…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.0.1 is finally available now, accompanied by a 3.2.7 release. Both releases come with significant bug fixes and improvements over their immediate predecessors and are strongly recommended for an upgrade. Please see JIRA for details on the issues addressed in each release.

Note that the 3.2.7 release officially turns the Spring Framework 3.2.x line into maintenance mode. A 3.2.8 release is planned for later this year; however, it will only contain bug fixes and is intended to be the last regular 3.2.x release. Further…

Following up on my Spring Framework 4 webinar last week, I'd like to share the Spring Framework 4.1 plan introduced there. We have a few key themes that are being prepared towards 4.1, for a timely GA delivery in August 2014, with a 4.1 RC to appear in June:

Comprehensive web resource handling - resource pipelining, cache control refinements
Caching support revisited - aligned with JCache 1.0 final, user-requested enhancements
JMS support overhaul - aligned with our messaging module, annotation-driven endpoints
Performance improvements - application startup, SpEL expression evaluation

These…

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce the availability of our first Spring Framework 4.0 release candidate. This release completes our 4.0 feature set with several new features since M3:

• full compatibility with recent OpenJDK 8 Developer Preview builds
• first-class support for Groovy-based bean definitions (as known from Grails)
• autowiring based on generic types (e.g. MyRepository<Customer>)
• using Objenesis to create CGLIB proxy instances (allowing for constructor injection)
• the introduction of a ScriptEvaluator mechanism (including JSR-223 support)
• time zone resolution in Spring MVC (connected to JSR-310 and Joda-Time)
• finer-grained configuration options for Spring MVC's @ControllerAdvice
• the introduction of MvcUriComponentsBuilder (inspired by Spring HATEOAS)
• …

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce the first milestone towards Spring Framework 4.0, delivering a first cut of our work on several key themes:

• the first wave of Java SE 8 / OpenJDK 8 support (some details following below)
• initial support for JMS 2.0, JPA 2.1, Bean Validation 1.1, and JSR-236 concurrency (from the EE 7 umbrella)
• a first cut of our generalized condition mechanism for bean definitions (@Conditional along the lines of @Profile)
• Spring's WebSocket endpoint model (which Rossen will be introducing in more detail soon)

With respect to Java SE 8, we support OpenJDK 8 build 88+ in several areas of the framework:

• support for the 1.8 bytecode format in component scanning and subclass generation
• lambda expressions and method references against Spring callback interfaces
• JSR-310 Date-Time value types for Spring data binding and formatting
• initial support for the JDK 8 parameter name discovery mechanism

Note: Spring's Java 8 support is a work in progress and tracking OpenJDK 8 snapshots on their way to the JDK 8 Developer Preview date in September (see http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk8/). We expect to release a corresponding Spring Framework 4.0 release candidate around that time, to be presented at SpringOne (September 9-12; see http://springone2gx.com…

Dear Spring community,

I'm happy to announce that the next iteration of the core framework will be Spring Framework 4.0!

The current 3.2 generation is a natural conclusion of the 3.x line, with Java-based configuration and REST having been recent focus areas next to Java SE 7 and Servlet 3.0 support.

For Spring Framework 4.0, our focus is on emerging enterprise themes in 2013 and beyond:

• First-class support for Java SE 8 based Spring applications: language features such as lambda expressions; APIs such as JSR-310 Date and Time
• Configuring and implementing Spring-style applications using Groovy 2: Groovy-based bean definitions; Groovy as the language of choice for an entire app
• Support for key Java EE 7 technologies: including JMS 2.0, JPA 2.1, Bean Validation 1.1, Servlet 3.1, and JCache
• Enabling WebSocket-style application architectures: support for JSR-356 compliant runtimes and related technologies
• Fine-grained eventing and messaging within the application: building on our existing application event and message listener mechanisms
• Pruning and dependency upgrades: removing deprecated features; raising minimum dependencies to Java 6+ etc

Building on the momentum and the preparation work behind Spring Framework 3.2, we intend to have yet another one-year iteration and reach 4.0 GA by the end of 2013.

We'll be tracking OpenJDK 8's schedule…