The beginning of the next season of Spring is here:  Spring Framework 2.0 M1 has been released.

Download it here.

Important new features include:

• Simplified, extensible XML configuration
• Powerful new Spring AOP features and AspectJ 5 integration
• Asynchronous JMS facilities enabling message-driven POJOs
• Spring Portlet MVC, a MVC framework for JSR-168 Portlets
• ... and much, much more
  

Spring 2.0 remains 100% backwards compatible with Spring 1.2 and continues to run on Java 1.3 and greater.

A word on the new configuration enhancements: Spring 2.0 uses XML Schema to support the definition of tailored application configuration schemas.  The M1 release ships convenient XML tags that greatly simplify the definition of declarative transactions, JNDI lookups, custom aspects, and common utility services such as loading properties files.

Please review the central JPetstore sample application included in the release.  This sample demonstrates the new 2.0 features in action and will continued to be refined in subsequent milestones.

Read Juergen's original announcement on the developer mailing list for more information.

Review the Spring 2.0 roadmap for information about upcoming milestones.