# Groovy Weekly #14

> Catch up on the latest Groovy news, releases, and articles, plus updates from the Greach conference in Madrid, covering Grails, Gradle, and more!

Author: [Guillaume Laforge](https://glaforge.dev/) | Published: 2014-03-25 | Topics: groovy, groovy-weekly | Canonical: https://glaforge.dev/posts/2014/03/25/groovy-weekly-14/


This week is a Spanish week! The Groovy community is moving towards Madrid (Spain) for the [Greach conference](http://greach.es/), to talk about Groovy, Grails, Gradle, Spock, GrooScript, GPars, Gaelyk and more! Enjoy the conference, for the lucky ones attending, and otherwise, have fun reading the news below.

## Releases

*   [Gaelyk 2.1 has been released](https://twitter.com/musketyr/status/448151069378740226)
*   There's a [Gradle plugin for the Grain](http://sysgears.com/grain/news/grain-gradle-plugin-released/) static website generator, for generating your site from your build
*   [Nextflow](http://nextflow.io/), a DSL for data-driven computational pipelines, based on Groovy and GPars, released in version 0.7
*   Marco Vermeulen releases [version 0.5.1 of the Gradle Spawn plugin](https://github.com/marcoVermeulen/gradle-spawn-plugin), for starting and stopping UNIX command line processes from within your build
*   [MongoDB GORM 2.0 plugin released](http://grails.org/news/1289916)
    
## Articles

*   An old question on Quora about [whether "Groovy is going away"](http://www.quora.com/Is-Groovy-going-away/answer/Rob-Fletcher?__snids__=357550680&__nsrc__=4) is re-surfacing from time to time, and Rob Fletcher recently gave a new answer for that question.
*   MrHaki is showing how to [use Groovy SQL in Grails](http://mrhaki.blogspot.fr/2014/03/grails-goodness-using-groovy-sql.html)
*   Angel Ruiz writes about the [Grails 2.2 to 2.3 migration](http://aruizca.com/migrating-from-grails-2-2-to-2-3/)
*   Alexander Reelsen believes [Spark, Groovy and JRebel make for a productive combination](http://spinscale.github.io/2013-02-rapid-web-application-development-with-spark-groovy-jrebel.html)
*   A paper in German on [using Grails for a portal framework](http://www.sigs.de/publications/newsletter/2014/03/breitfeld_kraft_soth_JS_02_14.pdf)
*   Libgdx, a Java based game framework, is [migrating to Gradle](http://www.badlogicgames.com/wordpress/?p=3336)

## Code snippets

*   Cédric Champeau has created a [Groovy solver for the 2048 game](https://gist.github.com/melix/9619800), showing a nice use of Geb usage
*   An example of [broadcasting with websockets and Ratpack](https://twitter.com/dailygrailstip/status/448358068166742016)

## Tweets

*   Dierk König says it's at the same time nice and weird to see [Java developers now being able to enjoy the benefits that Groovy has provided for the past 10 years](https://twitter.com/mittie/status/446292208048943104) already
*   Replying to Rob Fletcher about the fact that the lambda syntax from Java 8 was differing in syntax from Groovy, Neill Robbins was saying that he [prefers the legibility of Groovy's closures](https://twitter.com/boardbloke_uk/status/446557532635807744). What's your opinion?
*   Jeff Brown is working on Grails with [Groovy AST transforms and type checking extensions and finds that it makes Groovy a very powerful programming tool](https://twitter.com/jeffscottbrown/status/446673491052347392)
*   Dierk König remarks that [Groovy can be at the same time provide more static checks than Java, but also be way more dynamic](https://twitter.com/mittie/status/446675287489925120)
*   Matt Stine shares a nice [scaling demo app for Cloud Foundry using Spring Boot and Groovy](https://twitter.com/mstine/status/446407804954624000)
    
## Google+ posts

*   Richard Vowles [notes that with the latest IntelliJ IDEA 13.1 release, for your projects using the Maven Eclipse Groovy compiler](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RichardVowles/posts/PNMikyJ6jYS), there's no need anymore for the Eclipse Groovy plugin, as IDEA recognizes the Maven layout properly now out of the box.

## Other news

*   [Grails Diary week #12](http://grydeske.net/news/show/36) by Jacob Aae Mikkelsen

## Books

*   Book Review: [Programming Groovy 2 Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer](http://programmingitch.blogspot.dk/2014/03/book-review-programming-groovy-2.html)

## Events

*   Some of the [names of the speakers of GR8Conf Europe 2014](http://gr8conf.eu/?utm_source=glaforge&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=groovyweekly#/speakers)
*   The [Call for Papers of the SpringOne2GX 2014](https://twitter.com/springcentral/status/441693398152400896) conference will end on April 30th
*   The [GR8Conf US 2014 tickets are now on sale](https://twitter.com/gr8confus/status/446678741788278784), and you can get door buster tickets the following two weeks