Groovy beta goes to 2.0, gets static checking

The Groovy developers have announced the release of the first beta of Groovy 2.0, the next generation of the dynamic language which runs on the Java virtual machine. Previously, the developers had said they were working on version 1.9, but say that so many substantial new features were being included that they decided to switch to a new versioning scheme. The new scheme should see them releasing a new major version every year, with 2.0 finalised in early 2012, 3.0 in 2013 and so on. The developers assure Groovy users they will not be adopting Chrome or Firefox's "lightning fast numbering schemes".

The new 2.0 beta features an evolving cut of new static type checking functionality. It was noticed that a number of Groovy users didn't use the dynamic capabilities of Groovy but were in fact using it as a better syntax for Java. To cater for them, the Groovy compiler can be told to statically check types in a class or method by using a @TypeChecked annotation. A blog post from one of the developers of the static checker – internally code-named Grumpy at SpringSource – explains more about the checking process.

Other features being built into 2.0, but not in this beta release, include static compilation support and work on using JDK 7's "invoke dynamic" instructions; the developers are working on this functionality in a separate branch of Groovy's Git tree. Meanwhile, the Groovy team have released Groovy 1.8.4 which addresses a number of bugs that had been causing issues with Grails and Gradle automation. Full details are available in the release notes for 1.8.4. Source code and binary releases for both new editions are available from the Groovy download page and are licensed under the Apache Licence 2.0.

(djwm)