Overview

Griffon 0.9.5 – "Aquila clanga" - is a maintenance release of Griffon 0.9.

New Features

Buildtime

Dependencies

Griffon 0.9.5 upgrades the following dependencies

• Groovy 1.8.6
• Spring 3.1.0.RELEASE
• Ant 1.8.2
• Slf4j 1.6.4

Plugins and Archetypes

Perhaps the biggest change brought by this release is the full rework of the plugin system. Under the new rules it should be easier to create/build/install/upgrade/manage plugins. Archetypes too can be versioned and released like plugins are. this should make it easier to locate and install archetypes.

Artifact Repositories

Hosting your own plugins and archetypes just got easier. No more fumbling around with SVN and HTTP, the only thing you need now is a writable directory in the filesystem for now. Griffon 0.9.5 delivers 3 types of artifact repositories: local, remote and legacy. A default local repository is always available to you; you may configure additional ones. Remote repositories are supported in this version but the code to publish them is not yet released (keep an eye on https://github.com/griffon/griffon-artifact-portal though). Finally the legacy repository should ease up the transition to the new workflow.

Configuring a local repository is dead simple, as the following snippet shows

The repo definition may be placed under griffon-app/conf/BuildConfig.groovy or $USER_HOME/.griffon/settings.groovy

Classpath Resolution

The classpath used for build, compile, runtime and test should now be resolved at the last possible moment, instead of the earliest possible as it was before. Resolving the classpath eagerly caused a lot of trouble with addons.

Default Answer in Non Interactive Mode

Sometimes a command may require the user to specify a missing value. When the build is run in interactive mode (the default mode) then it's just a matter of typing the value in the console. However, if the build is run in non-interactive mode then it's very likely it will fail.

For this reason, the Griffon build accepts the definition of a default answer if the griffon.noninteractive.default.answer key is specified, like this

Be warned that this setting applies to every single input asked by a command.

Default Packaging Targets

4 packaging targets get executed when the package command is called with no arguments. There's now the option to specify which ones, by defining a list of Strings for griffon.packaging, for example

Now only those 2 targets will be executed whenever the package command is called without arguments. You can specify additional targets if the Installer plugin is available.

Dependency Resolution

It's now possible to specify SNAPSHOT dependencies on plugins and JARs. Classifiers on dependencies will also be honored, both in condensed and extended format, that is

Interactive Shell

There's a new interactive shell based on Apache Karaf's console. This new tool can be invoked by calling griffonsh from the command line. This console should enable faster responses as the JVM is started only once; also dependencies are cached and environment settings are retained. This shell grants access to all standard griffon command plus a few ones specific to this new environment. There are some rough edges still so treat it carefully

Offline Mode

Dependency resolution can now work in offline mode. When engaged, no external repository will be queried for dependencies; all dependencies should be resolved against the current cache. Also, all artifact repositories are off limits, except those of type local. This mode can be enabled by specifying griffon.offline.mode in either griffon-app/conf/BuildConfig.groovy or $USER_HOME/.griffon/settings.groovy. This flag can also be set as a system property.

Runtime

Swing Plugin

Swing support has been moved out of core and into its own plugin (https://github.com/griffon/griffon-swing-plugin). This should enable faster updates for Swing related bugs and features.

WindowManager and JInternalFrames

Speaking of Swing, the WindowManager is now capable of dealing with JInternalFrames as if they were windows. You can now show/hide/manage JInternalFrames in the same way as Windows.

Automatic Addon Discovery

Addons will now be automatically discovered and registered by the runtime. There's no longer a need to configure addons in plugin scripts (like _Instal.groovy) unless the addon requires non-standard configuration (which should be the least of cases).

Additional MVC Group Configuration

It's now possible to supply a group with more configuration while each member is being initialized. Simply define a config member in the group's definition, for example

You can access these values directly from the arguments passed to the mcGroupInit method, like this

Disable the Event Bus

Sometimes you don't want controllers to be registered as application event listeners because their code never handles an event. This results in performance upgrades as controllers need not be notified. Both the application's event bus and custom event buses (classes annotated with @griffon.transform.EventPublisher) have a new method that control if the event bus is enabled or not. Events posted while the event bus is disabled will be automatically discarded.

Skip Controller as Application Event Handler

Sometimes you don't want controllers to be registered as application event listeners because their code never handles an event. This results in performance upgrades as controllers need not be notified. This feature relies on the new config section available to MVC groups. Here's how this feature can be specified

Skip Firing MVC Lifecycle Events

There are times when creating multiple MVC groups where there's no need to trigger MVC events for example, a custom MVCGroupManager can potentially disable the event router for a time, then enable it after the group has been constructed. This feature relies on the new config section available to MVC groups. Here's how this feature can be specified

Skip Firing MVC New Instance Events

Applications will fire an event named NewInstance whenever an artifact gets instantiated, this results in 3 events per MVC group in the typical case. This is great for letting other parts of the application know that there's a new artifact instance that can be processed by dependency injection for example. But, the runtime also pays the penalty for notifying listeners that may not handle the event. Skipping these events may lead to better performance. This feature relies on the new config section available to MVC groups. Here's how this feature can be specified

Resource Location Abstraction

There's a new abstraction that deals with resource location: griffon.core.ResourceHandler. It defines the following contract

Applications, addons and artifacts have been retrofitted with this interface; it's recommended that you use these facilities instead of querying a classloader. Also, there's a new AST transformation that grafts these methods to any class: griffon.transform.ResourcesAware.

Breaking Changes

Buildtime

The plugin system and classpath resolution have been completely overhauled. We don't expect any major breackages however we sure to upgrade to the latest versions of available plugins. If you're running a plugin that has not been upgraded to 0.9.5 and its causing you trouble then please let us know asap and we'll fix it.

Runtime

Now that Swing support is provided outside of core every application must make sure to include it as a dependency. The upgrade command does this for you.

Threading Methods Renamed

The names of the threading methods (execSync, execAsync, execOutside) can be confusing. they have been renamed to the following ones

in griffon.core.ThreadingHandler

in griffon.core.GriffonApplication

in griffon.util.EventPublisher

in org.codehaus.griffon.runtime.core.EventRouter

The old method names are still available and have been marked as deprecated. They will be removed when Griffon 1.0 is released.

Sample Applications

Griffon 0.9.4 ships with 5 sample applications of varying levels of complexity demonstrating various parts of the framework. In order of complexity they are:

File Viewer

File Viewer is a simple demonstration of creating new MVCGroups on the fly.

Source: samples/FileViewer

To run the sample from source, change into the source directory and run griffon run-app from the command prompt.

GroovyEdit

GroovyEdit is an improved version of FileViewer that uses custom observable models.

Source: samples/GroovyEdit

To run the sample from source, change into the source directory and run griffon run-app from the command prompt.

Font Picker

Font Picker demonstrates form based data binding to adjust the sample rendering of system fonts.

Source: samples/FontPicker

To run the sample from source, change into the source directory and run griffon run-app from the command prompt.

Greet

Greet, a full featured Griffon Application, is a Twitter client. It shows Joint Java/Groovy compilation, richer MVCGroup interactions, and network service based data delivery.

Source: samples/Greet

To run the sample from source, change into the source directory and run griffon run-webstart from the command prompt. Because Greet uses JNLP APIs for browser integration using run-app will prevent web links from working.

SwingPad

SwingPad, a full featured Griffon Application, is a scripting console for rendering Groovy SwingBuilder views.

Source: samples/SwingPad

To run the sample from source, change into the source directory and run griffon run-app from the command prompt.

Release Notes

0.9.5

0.9.5-rc2

0.9.5-rc1