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What functionality and/or bug fixes does Groovy 1.9-beta-3 have that Groovy 1.8.2 doesn't have?

The release notes for Groovy 1.9-beta-3 ( http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10242&version=17495 ) and Groovy 1.8.2 ( http://jira.codehaus.org/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=10242&version=17494 ) look EXACTLY the same.

The only way 1.9-beta-3 looks different to 1.8.2 are these syntax additions introduced in beta-1:

  • underscores in number literals: 1_000_000_000
  • binary literals: 0b01010101
  • catch multiple exceptions at once with multicatch: catch (IOException | NullPointerException e)

I can't find any other differences in any release notes or announcements. Am I overlooking something important or are these version lines intended to be roughly the same?

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up vote 4 down vote accepted

Just tried a diff between the 1_8_X branch and the master branch, and apart from some tests getting cleaned up, some additional stuff going in to the AST handlers and some work on the build system around stub generation, that does seem to be the current differences between the two branches.

I assume at some point the groovy-antlr3 branch (when it is completed) will go into whatever version of Groovy is in beta at the time, and as 1.8.X draws towards EOL, all the new stuff will go into 1.9.X

This question is probably going to get a much more complete and believable response if you ask it on the developer mailing list however, as that will then be seen by the core development group of Groovy (who will know these things like the back of their hand)

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Thanks, thought I might have missed some new functionality in the Groovy 1.9 language branch, which is the usual reason such new branches get created. Guess Groovy does things differently in that regard. As for asking on the mailing list, Stack Overflo is for programming questions, and I'd think one of the Groovy developers is actively monitoring it, perhaps via a sockpuppet. Any ideas who that might be, Tim? –  Vorg van Geir Sep 14 '11 at 2:39
Sorry, I didn't ask on the list, but that's the place you should ask questions like this. The people who will know the definite answer to this question aren't necessarily on stack overflow –  tim_yates Sep 14 '11 at 6:10
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