So Grails 1.1 Beta 2 is out. Rejoice! There are many new features that are detailed in the release notes. However, one of the main ones in this beta is the new support for Maven….Regular readers of my blog will probably be aware of my long history as one who, ahem, is not particularily fond of Maven. Granted I am still not [particularly] fond of Maven, but it is the Christmas period and in the spirit of “why can’t we all just get [along]” I am proud to say that Grails integrates nicely with Maven now

Merry Christmas, indeed.

In the same spirit of “why can’t we all just get along”, I’ve had a similar shift in my opinion of Groovy over the years, I used to talk about Groovy as the wrong choice when compared to something like Jython or JRuby, but after having used Groovy in a number of projects, I ready to admit defeat.  While I’m still interested in Java inoperability with Ruby and Python, it is often much more straightforward to use Groovy than it is to deal with the “impedance mismatch” between something like JRuby and Java.  Groovy has turned into a mature and valuable language that offers tight integration with the JVM thanks to the continued efforts of Graeme and Guillame at G2One (recently acquired by SpringSource).

GMaven provides a great option for people interested in writing Maven Plugins in Groovy and also as a quick way to extend a Maven build with a Groovy script.