Dear Spring community,

It is my pleasure to announce that a feature-complete Spring Framework 5.0 release candidate is available now! We are expecting a further release candidate at the end of May and a final release in late June at this point.

As a major revision of the core framework, 5.0 RC1 comes with a Java 8+ baseline and many infrastructure refinements: e.g. our own Commons Logging bridge autodetecting Log4j 2, SLF4J, JUL by default; streamlined use of Servlet 3.1+; and early support for JUnit 5.0 M4.

Once again, here are the major Spring Framework 5 feature themes:

Reactive programming: introducing our Spring WebFlux framework built on Reactor 3.1, with support for RxJava 1.3 & 2.1 and running on Tomcat, Jetty, Netty or Undertow.

introducing our Spring WebFlux framework built on Reactor 3.1, with support for RxJava 1.3 & 2.1 and running on Tomcat, Jetty, Netty or Undertow. Functional style with Java 8 & Kotlin: several API refinements and Kotlin extensions across the framework, in particular for bean registration and functional web endpoints.

several API refinements and Kotlin extensions across the framework, in particular for bean registration and functional web endpoints. Integration with Java EE 8 APIs: support for Servlet 4.0, Bean Validation 2.0, JPA 2.2, as well as the JSON Binding API (as an alternative to Jackson/Gson in Spring MVC).

support for Servlet 4.0, Bean Validation 2.0, JPA 2.2, as well as the JSON Binding API (as an alternative to Jackson/Gson in Spring MVC). Ready for JDK 9: fully aligned with JDK 9 at runtime, on the classpath as well as the module path (on the latter: as filename-based “automatic modules” for the time being).

fully aligned with JDK 9 at runtime, on the classpath as well as the module path (on the latter: as filename-based “automatic modules” for the time being). And of course, many further refinements across the framework: check out our updated What’s New page for a comprehensive overview of changes since 4.3.

Cheers,

Juergen

P.S.:

For some background on Spring 5’s reactive programming story with Project Reactor and its Reactive Streams foundation, I highly recommend Rossen’s recent InfoQ podcast.

Also, stay tuned for the first Spring Boot 2.0 milestone, due early next week, building on Spring Framework 5.0 RC1 and a couple of portfolio releases to happen in the meantime…