After nearly four years the popular Spring Framework is getting an upgrade from version 3 to version 4.
Spring Framework cofounder and project lead Juergen Hoeller announced on his blog that the first milestone has been cut, although no early-access download link was provided.
The theme of version 4.0 seems to be Java SE 8 (based on OpenJDK 8 build 88+) and Java EE 7 support, plus some new usability features.
Juergen states that Java SE 8 support is a work in progress (ostensibly because Java SE 8 is a work in progress). He says to expect a release candidate around September 2013, to be timed with JDK 8 Developer Preview date also scheduled for September. (See the schedule at the Open JDK JDK 8 landing page). It will be presented at SpringOne (September 9-12).
Some of the Java SE 8 features to be supported include:
- JSR-335 Lambda expressions.
- JSR-310 Date-Time value types for Spring data binding and formatting.
- Support for the new 1.8 byte code format (required to support Lambda expressions).
Some of the JEE 7 features include support for:
- JSR-343 JMS 2.0.
- JSR-338 JPA 2.1.
- JSR-349 Bean Validation 1.1.
- JSR-236 Java EE 7 Enterprise Concurrency support.
- JSR-356 Spring's WebSocket endpoint mode.
SpringSource also intends to add the hypermedia REST constraint HATEOAS to the framework in parallel. HATEOAS is considered by RESTafarian orthodoxy to be a defining principal of REST. By adding HATEOAS support SpringSource is expected to mainstream that RESTful feature.
Spring 3.0 was first released in December 2009. Spring 3.1 followed in December 2011. Spring 3.2.2 was released in March 2013. Along with this announcement is the release of Spring Framework 3.2.3, containing bug fixes and OpenJDK 8 runtime support.
