Groovy++ goes fully open source

Groovy++, the static typing compiler extension for Groovy, is to be released as open source under the Apache Public Licence 2.0. The Groovy++ project started last year and at the time Alex Tkachman, project founder said Groovy++'s compiler "uses several pieces of technology, which our company uses and plans to use in our commercial products. It was not critical when [the] project started as [an] experiment, but now we need to extract these parts and replace/rewrite [them] with proper open-source alternatives". Since Tkachman has now announced that the source will be released under the APL 2.0 this process appears to be complete.

Groovy++ allows developers to mark code written in Groovy, the dynamic scripting language for Java, with the @Typed annotation. When the system detects the @Typed annotation, it switches to a static typing compiler which performs all the necessary checks at compile time and produces fast byte code. The dynamic Groovy code passes through the normal Groovy compiler. Groovy++ also has it's own, already open source, standard library, optimised for statically typed use. The Groovy++ developers feel that it allows Groovy developers to choose when they want to make use of Groovy's dynamic nature, but get as-fast-as-Java performance when they require it. To make use of Groovy++ requires only the addition of one jar file to a build process.

For more information on Groovy++, the Groovypptest project hosts wiki pages describing Groovy++ in greater detail, and a mailing list for Groovy++ discussions and announcements. The developers are currently in the process of opening their build infrastructure so that the project is open to other developers.

See also:

• Grails and Groovy - The Dynamic Duo for Java, a feature from The H.
  

(djwm)