The Spring Roo team at DISID Corporation has announced the first release candidate of Spring Roo 2.0. This is the first release candidate. From now on, we’re going to work on the improvements and bug fixes that the community detects until we'll be able to publish the final release. We encourage you all to participate in this process — testing the 2.0.0.RC1 version and reporting the possible bugs and improvements in our JIRA.

RC1 version includes some improvements and bugs fixes detected in the Spring Roo 2.0.0.M3 version. Also, it includes some significant new features:

• Included some improvements on existing commands.
• Improved data-on-demand generation to use it in test commands.
• Improved test unit command which now creates fully functional tests for JPA entities.
• Improved test integration command which now allows you to create integration tests for JPA repositories and JSON/Thymeleaf controllers.
• Improved field commands readability, removing unnecessary options and make other dynamically visible.
• Improved push-in --method command, allowing you to distinguish between methods with the same name but different arguments.
• Improved repository command to allows developers to use projections as default return type.
• Update Spring IO version to Athens-RELEASE.
• Update the Springlets library version to 1.2.0.RC1. It provides some awesome new features that make Spring application development easier.
• Use projections as default return type of your repository methods.
• Improved read-only entities management.
• Including new JSONDeserializers and JSONMixin classes.
• Including new LinkFactories classes to obtain URLs from Thymeleaf easily.
• Generating default JavaDoc to all generated methods, constructors and fields.
• New DataTables extension has been created to apply advanced configuration on DataTables elements. This extension is fully extensible, so developers will be able to customize its DataTable component easily.
• Added datatables.mark.js to mark the filtered text in DataTables component.
• Added concurrency control in the view layer, answering to the user if he wants to discard his changes and reload the record or he wants to apply his changes.
• HTML5 improvements and migration to Thymeleaf 3.
• Generating reports using DynamicJasper on DataTables component, allowing you to export data to CSV, PDF, and XLS.
• Added new entity visualization support using --entityFormatExpression and --entityFormatMessage in entity commands.
• Added support for selecting those views of a particular entity that should show details.
• Added new visualization system for one-to-one composition related entities.
• Added multi-language support for Java enumerated constants.
• Added support for multi-row selection and batch delete.
• As always, Spring Roo Reference guide has been updated with all the new features.

For full details on the changes made in the new Spring Roo version, please refer to the Spring Roo 2.0.0.RC1 Release Note. Download the new Spring Roo 2.0.0.RC1 version from our Project Page.

Additionally, Spring Tool Suite (STS) team is working in releasing the STS 3.8.4 which will include the Spring IDE Roo Support for Roo 2.0.0.RC1. If you want to install the updated Roo components before, you would do it manually via the Spring IDE nightly update site, but remember that you will get an unstable version of STS that could contain errors. Check the Spring Roo reference guide to know how to install the nightly distribution.

For more specific information about the Spring Roo project, please see the Project Page | GitHub.

As always, you’ll also find Roo on Twitter — either follow @SpringRoo or just include #SpringRoo in your tweets.

Thanks to all awesome users who came up with useful bug reports and suggestions. We encourage you all again to participate in the final release process testing the 2.0.0.RC1 version and reporting the possible bugs and improvements in our JIRA.