Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 RC3 has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This third release candidate includes many refinements based on valuable user feedback that we received for the previous release candidates.  With this release, Spring 2.0 final is now just around the corner.

The most significant refinements include:

• Spring 1.2 compatibility has been restored for default-lazy-init="true", with respect to detection of special beans (such as PropertyPlaceholderConfigurers) by type. Alongside, lazy class loading has been reworked to allow for placeholders in class names etc. Strict lazy class loading can still be enforced for special ApplicationContexts.

• Persistence exception translation based on the @Repository annotation is now available for Hibernate3, JDO and TopLink as well, not just for JPA.  Exception translation is now based on the underlying ORM tool's native exceptions as far as possible, with Spring-specific SQLException translation only applying when explicitly specified.

• In our JMS support DefaultMessageListenerContainer features refined resource handling (which works on JBoss 4.0 as well), and is able to recover from a broken Connection or Destination. The caching of JMS resources is now fully configurable, with sensible defaults for both the XA and the non-XA scenario. Furthermore, JmsTemplate reuses cached JMS resources within a JTA transaction.

• Servlet and Portlet Web MVC support a common WebRequestInterceptor abstraction now, which allows Open Session/EntityManager/etc in View interceptors to be reused across Servlet and Portlet environments. As a consequence, all such Portlet-specific interceptors have been dropped in favor of the new generic ones (OpenSessionInViewInterceptor etc).
  

Of course, there are many further refiements in the details. Please see the changelog file (as well as the changelog in JIRA) for details.

Let us know about any remaining issues you might encounter with RC3.  The Spring 2.0 final release is now just around the corner.

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 RC2 has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This is the second release candidate on the way to Spring 2.0 final. It introduces a number of bug fixes and minor refinements, in particular in the AOP framework and in the JPA support. Please see the changelog for details. A number of further known issues will be addressed in the upcoming 2.0 RC3 release; see our JIRA road map for details.

Please give this release a try with your applications and let us know about any problems that you might encounter! It is important to emphasize that Spring 2.0 provides backwards compatability with the Spring 1.x series.  Spring 2.0 also continues to support JDK 1.3+ and J2EE 1.3+ (even J2EE 1.2+ except for the JSP tags and the EJB support). Compatability is critically important to our user base and we are committed to providing it. Hence, we're also interested in learning about potential compatibility issues on any such platform.

Thank you for all of the feedback leading up to this release.  We look forward to more of the same towards the big 2.0 GA launch date!

Enjoy,

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 RC1 has been released.  Download | Documentation | Changelog

This is the first release candidate for Spring 2.0 after five milestone releases over the last six months. This stable release is waiting for broad user feedback on the way towards 2.0 final, targeted for early July.

The major new themes of Spring 2.0 are:

1. Simplified Configuration - you will find you write much less code overall to configuration your applications.  The code you do write is high-level and domain-specific, benefiting from smart defaults as well as rich validation and tool support.


2. Powerful AOP Unification - you may apply aspects that weave custom behavior before, after, and around your objects concisely with AspectJ while still benefiting from the simplicity of the Spring AOP runtime.


3. JSR 220 Java Persistence Archtecture (JPA) - to provide you choice in persistence provider implementation.  Spring is the first to support JPA in both JEE and JSE environments with full portability between the two.


4. Asynchronous JMS Messaging - Message-Driven POJOs bring you lightweight asynchronous components for JSE environments with the choice of JMS provider.


5. JSR-168 Portlets - Spring Portlet MVC delivers a framework for developing JSR 168 portlets which includes integration with Spring Web Flow for orchestrating user interactions.
   

It is important to emphasize that Spring 2.0 provides backwards compatability with the Spring 1.x series.  Compatability is critically important to our user base and we are committed to providing it.

Further major new features for each of these areas include...

• Bean definitions based on XML schema, with out-of-the-box XML namespaces for simplifying common configuration tasks
• Support for extended bean scopes in application contexts, with web request and session scopes as main targets
• Bean definition enhancements: lazy loading of bean classes, collection merging, and intelligent error messages
  

• Simplified AOP configuration based on XML schema namespaces
• Support for AspectJ pointcut expression language and @AspectJ-style aspects
• Support for dependency injection on any object, including fine grained domain objects (based on AspectJ)

• Enhanced JDBC support: named SQL parameters, generics-based SimpleJdbcTemplate
• Explicit support for Hibernate 3.1 and 3.2 (while remaining compatible with Hibernate 3.0)
• Support for the Java Persistence API (JPA), including the full container contract with class instrumentation

• TaskExecutor abstraction for submitting asynchronous work
• Support for various thread pools, such as a Java 5 ThreadPoolExecutor and a CommonJ WorkManager
• Support for asynchronous JMS ("Message-Driven POJOs") based on message listener containers

• Conventions-based web MVC: controller mappings, model attribute names
• JSP form tag library for use with Spring Web MVC and Spring Web Flow
• Full support for Portlet environments, including Portlet-style MVC based on a DispatcherPortlet
  

... and many, many other refinements in the details.

To see many of these features in action, review the JPetstore reference application included in the release distribution within the samples/jpetstore directory.  See the What's New in 2.0? section of the reference documentation for additional detail.

We will be working with the Maven2 community to have 2.0 RC1 uploaded to the Maven repository in the coming days.

Thank you Spring community for all of the feedback leading up to this release.  We look forward to your feedback towards the big 2.0 GA launch date!

Enjoy, 

Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring 2.0 Product Development

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 1.2.8 has been released. Download | Docs | Changelog

This is a maintenance release, fixing a number of issues found in previous 1.2.x releases. Most of these fixes have been backported from 2.0 M4, so have already been available there. Please see the changelog for details.

Juergen
-----
Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development
Chief Architect, Interface21
http://www.springframework.org
http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring community,

We are pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 M4 has been released.  Download | Docs | Changelog

Spring 2.0 M4 is the fourth milestone of the next generation of Spring.

The new and noteworthy include:

• updated JPA support
• named parameter support for JDBC acces
• refined XML schema namespaces
• auto-proxying for FactoryBean-created objects
• and many other refinements noted in the changelog.

This release also contains numerous fixes for issues discovered since M3.  Users of previous milestones are encouraged to update.  See the changelog for details on all M4 changes.

With this release we are approaching a feature freeze for the 2.0 production target, with only a few further features and refinements planned for inclusion in 2.0. The next release will be Spring 2.0 Release Candidate 1 (RC1), scheduled for May.

We will also release a 1.2.8 maintenance release within a few days, backporting all applicable fixes from 2.0 M4. (This is already available from mbranch-1-2 in CVS, awaiting final tests.)

Enjoy and keep the feedback rolling in,

Juergen
-----
Juergen Hoeller
Lead, Spring Framework Development
Chief Architect, Interface21
http://www.springframework.org
http://www.interface21.com

Dear Spring community,

I am pleased to announce that Spring 2.0 M2 has been released.

Download it here.

Spring 2.0 M2 is the second milestone of the next generation of Spring. This release includes enhancements and new features, including refined AspectJ support and Java Persistence API (draft) support.  It also contains fixes for issues discovered since 2.0 M1.

Please see the changelog for details.

Spring 1.2.7 will also be released shortly, backporting a number of fixes and minor enhancements from 2.0 M1/M2, and providing the 1.2 series basis for the upcoming Spring Web Flow 1.0 release candidate.  The next Spring release in the 2.0 series will be 2.0 M3. Please review the roadmap for more detailed information.

Cheers,

Juergen
 
-----
Juergen Hoeller
Interface21 Ltd
http://www.springframework.com

We're pleased to announce that Spring 1.2.6 has just been released. This is a bugfix and minor enhancement release, fixing a number of issues found in previous 1.2.x releases and introducing various minor new features.

As always, for a full list of enhancements and fixes, please see the changelog.

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For anybody accessing CVS, note that CVS HEAD is now finally dedicated to Spring 2.0 development. A maintenance branch "mbranch-1-2" has been created for any future work in the 1.2.x line.

During the course of this week, we will move already prepared 2.0 features from the sandbox over to the main sources. Starting with this, the nightly snapshots will be 1.3 RC1 previews, already containing 1.3 features.

We're pleased to announce that Spring 1.2.5 has just been released. This is a bugfix and minor enhancement release, fixing a number of issues found in previous 1.2.x releases and introducing various minor new features.

As always, for a full list of enhancements and fixes, please see the changelog.