You are viewing an old version of this page. View the current version.
Compare with Current ·
View Page History
h1 Introduction to Groovy
Groovy is a new agile dynamic language for the JVM combining lots of great features from languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk
and making them available to the Java developers using a Java-like syntax.
Groovy is designed to help you get things done on the Java platform in a quicker, more concise and fun way - bringing the power
of Python and Ruby inside the Java platform.
Groovy can be used as an alternative compiler to javac to generate standard Java bytecode to be used by any Java project
or it can be used dynamically as an alternative language such as for scripting Java objects, templating or writing unit test cases.
h2 Features
- Closure support
- Native syntax for Lists and Maps
- Groovy Markup
- Groovy Path expression language
- Groovlets for implementing Servlets easily in simple Groovy scripts
- Groovy SQL for making SQL more Groovy
- Groovy Beans for simpler syntax for working with beans
- Groovy Template Engines which are pluggable, simple to use, integrate GPath and compile to bytecode
- Ant Scripting
- Regex syntax for neater scripting with regular expressions
- Operator Overloading to simplify working with datatypes Collections and Maps
- Polymorphic iteration and Autoboxing
- Compiles straight to Java bytecode & works cleanly with all existing Java objects & libraries
h2 Getting started
Probably the best way to get started on Groovy is to install a binary distribution and
play with it.
Or try reading the user guide or browsing some of the links on the left of this page.
The Groovy team is always looking at ways to further improve and encourage the collaboration and contributions from the community.
Today, the we are looking for a sponsor for a dedicated server that would host our new Continuous Integration server. If you or your company is interested in helping Groovy by contributing hardware and/or hosting, please contact us.
The details of the project are available here: http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GROOVY/A+new+CI+server+for+the+Groovy+project
On behalf of the Groovy team, thanks in advance for your help and support!
We're looking forward to hearing from you.
Heads up on a joint bug-fix release, with Groovy 2.0.8 and 2.1.3.
We released the 2.0.8 bug fix in particular for Grails which was affected by a couple issues but that hadn't planned on migrating just yet to the 2.1.x line.
If you want to learn more about the issues closed, please have a look at the JIRA release notes for Groovy 2.0.8 and Groovy 2.1.3.
Head down to the Download section to download our the latest releases.
Thanks for all your contributions, and keep on groovy'ing!
The Groovy development team is happy to announce the joint releases of Groovy 1.8.9, 2.0.7, and 2.1.1!
Those three releases are essentially bug fix releases.
You can have a look at the JIRA issues we tackled here:
Head over to the Groovy distribution area to download the Groovy distributions and documentation.
Some further notes about our current releases and branches:
Groovy 1.8.9 is the last planned update for the 1.8 versions of Groovy unless critical bugs arise.
When resolving bug requests we may not automatically apply them to the 1.8 versions of Groovy as we are trying to focus on later releases when we can and backporting some of the fixes can be a little tricky.
However, if you have a critical bug and are unable to upgrade, please indicate that in the relevant jira issue and we will try to take that into account when resolving issues.
Of course patches/pull requests against the 1_8_X branch are also welcome! :-)
Releasing Groovy 2.0.7 wasn't strictly necessary as upgrading to Groovy 2.1.1 is straightforward but we wanted to make a formal last release for the 2.0.x branch.
And going forward, bug fixes will be targeted at both 2.1.x and 2.2 lines, and only 2.2 will get any new features that may come, but we don't anticipate that 2.0.x will get further fixes as the 2.1.x line supersedes that branch.
Thanks a lot to all those who contributed to this release, and we're looking forward to hearing about your feedback!
InfoQ interview Groovy project lead Guillaume Laforge about the recent release of Groovy 2.1.
In this interview, the discussion centered around the new features of that release, including coverage of the "invoke dynamic" support, performance, meta-annotations, compiler configuration, and more.
The Groovy team is pleased to announce the release of Groovy 2.1.0.
With over 1.7 million downloads in 2012, a strong ecosystem, Groovy continues its development and adoption, refines existing features and evolves new ones.
In this new release, Groovy 2.1:
- offers full support for the JDK 7 “invoke dynamic” bytecode instruction and API,
- goes beyond conventional static type checking capabilities with a special annotation to assist with documentation and type safety of DSLs and adds static type checker extensions,
- provides additional compilation customization options,
- features a meta-annotation facility for combining annotations elegantly,
- and provides various other enhancements and minor improvements.
Please read all the details about the new features and improvements in the Groovy 2.1 release notes document:
You can download Groovy 2.1.0 from the Download area:
And have a look at the JIRA tickets we worked on:
Thanks a lot to all our users, contributors and committers who made this release possible.
I'd particularly like thank our new committers: Pascal Schumacher, André Steingreß and Tim Yates, for all their feedback and various contributions. Welcome to the team!
The Groovy team is looking forward to your feedback on this new release!
Keep on groovy'ing!
The Groovy team is pleased to announce the second release candidate of Groovy 2.1.0.
The final release is merely days away, so please be sure to test that release and give us your feedback, before we go gold.
Unless really critical bugs or regressions arise, we're aiming at going final next week or the following.
Download and try Groovy 2.1.0-rc-2 here:
The JIRA release notes:
As a reminder of what's coming, here's what you can expect from Groovy 2.1:
- complete invoke dynamic support when running with the "indy" JAR on JDK 7
- upgrade to GPars 1.0: the Groovy distribution now bundles the GPars 1.0 final release
- @DelegatesTo annotation: to help IDEs and the static type checker and compiler to know that method calls in a method parameter closure are delegated to another parameter of the method -- nice for DSLs like in Gradle build files
- custom type checking extensions: so you can type check your DSLs at compile-time with your own logic
- a meta-annotation system: which allows you to define a new annotation actually combining several others -- which also means being able to apply several AST transformations with a single custom annotation
- custom base script class flag for the groovyc compiler: to set a base script class when compiling Groovy scripts
- compiler configuration script: to let you define various configuration options for the Groovy compiler, like specifying custom file extensions, various compilation customizers to apply, etc.
- compilation customizer builder: a special builder for specifying compilation customizers
- jar://, file://, http:// prefix support for launching Groovy scripts from the command line
- and many bug fixes and various minor improvements
Thanks a lot for your great contributions, in whichever form it takes, and particular thanks to some of our most prolific contributors sending us frequent patches and pull requests: André Steingreß, Tim Yates, and Pascal Schumacher.
As promised before the Christmas / New Year's Eve break, I'm happy to announce the availability of the Release Candidate for Groovy 2.1.0.
Please be sure to test that release and give us your feedback, before we go final.
Unless really critical bugs or regressions arise, we're aiming at going final by the end of the month.
Download and try Groovy 2.1.0-rc-1 here:
The JIRA release notes:
As a reminder of what's coming (pending the final release notes document), here's what you can expect from Groovy 2.1:
- complete invoke dynamic support when running with the "indy" JAR on JDK 7
- upgrade to GPars 1.0: the Groovy distribution now bundles the GPars 1.0 final release
- @DelegatesTo annotation: to help IDEs and the static type checker and compiler to know that method calls in a method parameter closure are delegated to another parameter of the method -- nice for DSLs like in Gradle build files
- custom type checking extensions: so you can type check your DSLs at compile-time with your own logic
- a meta-annotation system: which allows you to define a new annotation actually combining several others -- which also means being able to apply several AST transformations with a single custom annotation
- custom base script class flag for the groovyc compiler: to set a base script class when compiling Groovy scripts
- compiler configuration script: to let you define various configuration options for the Groovy compiler, like specifying custom file extensions, various compilation customizers to apply, etc.
- compilation customizer builder: a special builder for specifying compilation customizers
- jar://, file://, http:// prefix support for launching Groovy scripts from the command line
- and many bug fixes and various minor improvements
Thanks a lot to all the contributors to this release!
And on behalf of the team, I wish our Groovy users all the best for 2013!
Since the world didn't seem to end today, it is with great pleasure that we bring under your Christmas tree the following presents: the release of Groovy 2.1.0-beta-1 and Groovy 2.0.6.
Groovy 2.0.6 is a bug fix release for our Groovy 2.0.X line, whereas Groovy 2.1.0-beta-1 contains new features.
You can download Groovy at the usual location:
The JIRA release notes can be found here:
More extensive release notes will be available for the final Groovy 2.1.0 release, but please let me highlight the following key new features:
- complete invoke dynamic support when running with the "indy" JAR on JDK 7
- upgrade to GPars 1.0: the Groovy distribution now bundles the GPars 1.0 final release
- @DelegatesTo annotation: to help IDEs and the static type checker and compiler to know that method calls in a method parameter closure are delegated to another parameter of the method -- nice for DSLs like in Gradle build files
- custom type checking extensions: so you can type check your DSLs at compile-time with your own logic
- a meta-annotation system: which allows you to define a new annotation actually combining several others -- which also means being able to apply several AST transformations with a single custom annotation
- custom base script class flag for the groovyc compiler: to set a base script class when compiling Groovy scripts
- compiler configuration script: to let you define various configuration options for the Groovy compiler, like specifying custom file extensions, various compilation customizers to apply, etc.
- compilation customizer builder: a special builder for specifying compilation customizers
- jar://, file://, http:// prefix support for launching Groovy scripts from the command line
Although more details will be provided later on for the final release, please don't hesitate to ask questions about those new features and improvements till then.
A little reminder on the roadmap, we intend on releasing a release candidate of Groovy 2.1 the second week of January, and if all goes well (if we don't need another RC for some last minute issues), we'll go straight to the final release at the end of January.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, your bug reports, your contributions, your pull requests!
It's with such a great community of users that we make Groovy a joy to use in our every day projects.
The whole development team joins me to wish you the best for the holidays and for next year!
A Groovy Christmas and a Happy New Year to all!
InfoQ is running a reader-driven research about JVM languages. If you like Groovy, don't forget to vote for us 
Groovy project manager, Guillaume Laforge, recently presented an online webinar on Groovy 2.0.
You can watch it on SpringSource's Dev channel on YouTube: What's new in Groovy 2.0?
And you can have a look at the slides on Slideshare.
Syndicate this site via RSS
Labels