Note that there's a follow-up blog post about Spring 5 system requirements. You might want to start there if you're primarily interested in the Spring 5 planning process.

In our quest for Java EE integration, we're trying to actively embrace the latest generation of specifications such as JPA, Bean Validation and of course the Servlet and JMS APIs. As of Spring 4, we're supporting the Java EE 6 and 7 level of specifications side by side. We would like to raise it to the EE 7+ level (JPA 2.1, Bean Validation 1.1, and in particular Servlet 3.1 and JMS 2.0) soon but are facing a fundamental problem: the lack of EE 7 platform…

As Josh mentioned in "This Week in Spring" already, Eugen Paraschiv recently did a noteworthy survey on the adoption of Spring 4 and Java 8 as well as Spring Boot: http://www.baeldung.com/java-8-spring-4-and-spring-boot-adoption

Those are interesting numbers for us. Within the Spring universe, Java 8 adoption seems to be approaching 40%! And in terms of Spring Framework versions, Spring 4 is at 65% already, which I'm really happy to see. Even taking into account that a large part of the corporate use of Spring might not be represented in those numbers, that's a great trend. And Pivotal's…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.2 RC1 is now available from our milestone repository. This is a feature release in the 4.x line with a focus on core refinements and modern web capabilities:

• Annotation detection on Java 8 default methods (e.g. @Bean)
• Annotation-based application events (@EventListener)
• First-class support for annotation attribute aliases
• Full nested path processing for direct field binding
• Data binding and conversion for JSR-354 Money & Currency
• Integration with Hibernate ORM 5.0 (natively and via JPA)
• Rich support for CORS and declarative HTTP caching
• First-class support for HTTP Streaming and Server-Sent Events
• Listenable/CompletableFuture as message handler return value
• A STOMP client for use over TCP and WebSocket channels
…

You might have heard about the end of public updates for Java 7, coming up in just a few days with the release of Java 7 update 80. See the following Oracle pages for a reference:

https://blogs.oracle.com/java-platform-group/entry/future_updates_of_java_7 http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html

Let's clarify what it really is: the end of public updates, and by no means an end of life (EOL). With the second link above, scroll down to the "Oracle Java SE Support Roadmap" section and you'll find the actual EOL dates: Dec 2018 for Java 6 and Jul 2022 for Java 7. Yes, that's another…

Dear Spring community,

It’s my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.1.6 is available now. This is almost exclusively a bugfix release and therefore a strongly recommended upgrade for all current 4.x users. In particular, we recommend an upgrade from the superseded 4.0.x line as well.

Release Notes | Project Page | GitHub | Issues | Documentation

Spring Framework 4.1.6 is also the first release to be formally compatible with the recently released JDK 8 update 40. Spring 4.1.x supports a wide range of Java runtimes now, from 2010-era JDK 6 variants up until the latest 2015-era JDK…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that Spring Framework 4.1.4, 4.0.9 and 3.2.13 have been released just in time for New Year's Eve! These maintenance releases fix various minor issues and provide several minor improvements as well; please see JIRA for details.

Note that 4.0.9 is conceived as the last release in the 4.0.x line, concluding twelve months of active 4.0.x maintenance. We strongly recommend an upgrade to 4.1.x; your next maintenance release after 4.0.9 will be 4.1.5 which you need to be prepared to upgrade to.

Furthermore, please note that the 3.2.x line - and…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce the immediate availability of Spring Framework 4.1.2, accompanied by 4.0.8 and 3.2.12 maintenance releases.

Spring Framework 4.1.2 is our second maintenance release in the 4.1.x line but also comes as a key feature release, including many user-suggested and user-contributed improvements: in total, more than one hundred issues have been addressed. 4.1.2 also serves as the core framework release to go into Spring Boot 1.2 which is just around the corner...

-> List of resolved JIRA issues for Spring Framework 4.1.2

Note that aside from fixing…

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce that Spring Framework 4.1.1 is available now. As the first maintenance release in the 4.1 line, this release contains a wide range of fixes for regressions and other issues reported against 4.1 GA. A big thank you to all the issue reporters out there!

4.1.1 also comes with a selection of minor enhancements, for example: consistent handling of Java 8's Optional type, a Jackson ObjectMapper builder class with refined defaults, some requested JDBC refinements, as well as specific performance improvements.

-> List of resolved JIRA issues for Spring…

Dear Spring community,

I'm pleased to announce that after an intense release candidate phase, the Spring Framework 4.1 GA release is now available!

Our 4.1 generation delivers major new features along several themes:

• Annotated JMS listener methods
• Comprehensive support for JCache (JSR-107) annotations
• Flexible resolution and transformation of static web resources
• MVC views: declarative resolution, Groovy markup templates, Jackson's JsonView
• WebSocket refinements: WebSocket scope, SockJS client support, WebSocket stats
• Performance: SpEL compiler mode, concurrency fine-tuning across the container
…

Dear Spring community,

It's my pleasure to announce that the first Spring Framework 4.1 release candidate is available now. Our 4.1 delivers a wide range of new features along the following themes:

Annotated JMS listener methods and support for JMS 2.0's shared subscriptions