We're proud to announce this third milestone (M3) of the JavaConfig project. Much has happened in the long months since M2, including a healthy dose of user feedback. The good news is that we've learned users seem to like JavaConfig and the programming model works well for most needs. Thanks to everyone that has participated in the process thus far, including Rick Hightower, Solomon Duskis, Ben Rowlands, Craig Walls, Jim Moore, and many others.

M3 includes 20+ bug fixes and feature additions. See Chapter 2, New & Noteworthy in 1.0.0.m3 for details. As a special note to existing users, M3 introduces one fairly major change to the existing public API - the deprecation of AnnotationApplicationContext in favor of its replacement, JavaConfigApplicationContext. AnnotationApplicationContext will remain deprecated in the codebase up until the 1.0 GA release, at which time it will be deleted permanently. So take heed and swap out references as soon as you can.

Future milestones and RCs on the path to 1.0 may include other breaking API changes. The core public API (annotations, application contexts, and key util classes) will not likely change radically, but internal APIs almost certainly will. It is important to the team that the packaging structure and internals of JavaConfig are 'just right' in order to facilitate flexible evolution and solid backward compatibility post-1.0.

Thanks for taking a look at JavaConfig! Your feedback will drive future revisions, so please don't hesitate to contact the team via JIRA issue tracking with anything you see missing.