# Groovy Weekly #68

> Get the latest Groovy news, including the NYT Android app leveraging Groovy, Apache migration updates, and insightful developer interviews.

Author: [Guillaume Laforge](https://glaforge.dev/) | Published: 2015-04-28 | Topics: groovy, groovy-weekly | Canonical: https://glaforge.dev/posts/2015/04/28/groovy-weekly-68/


Remember the Android support of Groovy 2.4? Well, the new [New York Times Android application, written in Groovy](https://twitter.com/mohitpandey/status/592723947311001600) and using RxJava is now live! If a hugely popular Android app is leveraging Groovy, yours can too!

With Groovy’s move to the Apache Software Foundation, [don’t forget to star the new Groovy Github repository](https://twitter.com/sbglasius/status/591322009214160896)!

Don’t miss the interesting interviews of [Jeff Brown](http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/04/grails-3) and [Guillaume Laforge](https://www.voxxed.com/blog/2015/04/pushing-groovy-to-the-speed-of-java-and-beyond/).

Reminder about our infrastructure changes, as we move the Groovy project through the incubation process at Apache: the [JIRA issue tracker has moved](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/GROOVY/), and don’t forget that the [Groovy mailing-lists are also moving](http://www.groovy-lang.org/mailing-lists.html). The novelty this week is that the [Apache Git repository](https://twitter.com/glaforge/status/588809178958925824) is now the new mainline, but you can contribute pull requests on the [Apache Groovy Github mirror](https://twitter.com/glaforge/status/588960808094326784).

## Releases

*   [Gradle 2.4-rc-1](http://discuss.gradle.org/t/gradle-2-4-rc-1-is-now-available-for-testing/9282) released with annotation processing with Groovy code
*   Online presentation service Prezi releases a [Haskell plugin for Gradle](https://twitter.com/dvigovszky/status/590889954655473664)

## Articles

*   MrHaki’s on the writing spree:
    *   Grails Goodness
        *   [adding health check indicators](http://mrhaki.blogspot.fr/2015/04/grails-goodness-adding-health-check.html)
        *   [log startup info](http://mrhaki.blogspot.fr/2015/04/grails-goodness-log-startup-info.html)
        *   [save application PID in file](http://mrhaki.blogspot.fr/2015/04/grails-goodness-save-application-pid-in.html)
    *   Gradle Goodness
        *   [handle copying duplicate files](http://mrhaki.blogspot.fr/2015/04/gradle-goodness-handle-copying.html)
        *   [usee Git commit id in build script](http://mrhaki.blogspot.fr/2015/04/gradle-goodness-use-git-commit-id-in.html)
*   [Groovy now runs faster on mobile](http://www.grails.info/2015/04/23/new-blog-groovy-now-runs-faster-than-java-on-mobile/) than Java says Grails Info news site
*   Iván López on [talking about Groovy](http://www.kaleidos.net/blog/1071/talking-about-groovy-in-vienna/) in Vienna

## Interviews

*   Guillaume Laforge interviewed by Voxxed during Devoxx France, talking about [Groovy's Android support, Grails 3.0, Groovy in RESTful APIs](https://www.voxxed.com/blog/2015/04/pushing-groovy-to-the-speed-of-java-and-beyond/) and more
*   Matt Raible interview [Jeff Brown on Grails 3](http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/04/grails-3), built on Spring Boot and Gradle

## News

*   The [New York Times Android application written in Groovy](https://twitter.com/mohitpandey/status/592723947311001600) and using RxJava is now live!
*   [Grails Brasil launches its new website](http://www.itexto.net/devkico/?p=2156), promising to open source its code base so other user groups can benefit from it
*   [Gradle 2.4-rc-1](https://twitter.com/gvmtool/status/592940974470537216) available on GVM
*   Gradle 2.4-rc-1 release notes covers [annotation processing of Groovy code](https://gradle.org/docs/2.4-rc-1/release-notes#support-for-%E2%80%9Cannotation-processing%E2%80%9D-of-groovy-code)

## Presentations

*   [Programmatic browser automation with Geb](http://fr.slideshare.net/nareshak/pragmatic-browser-automation-with-geb-gids-2015) by Naresha K at the Great Indian Developer Summit

## Tweets

*   Wtih Groovy moving to Apache, so did its Github repository. [Don't forget to star the new Groovy repo on Github](https://twitter.com/sbglasius/status/591322009214160896)!
*   Dagger developer Jake Wharton mentions [support for annotation in Groovy code via generated stubs with Gradle 2.4](https://twitter.com/JakeWharton/status/591242052202934273)
*   [GrooScript moved its Groovy Ecosystem demo](https://twitter.com/grooscript/status/591713872568033282) to a new location
*   Voxxed mentions [Groovy moving to the speed of Java](https://twitter.com/voxxed/status/591231196245417984)
*   Dierk König mentions that the script of [Groovy in Action, 2nd edition, has over 1600 commits](https://twitter.com/mittie/status/592937821402443776) on its private Git repository
*   [Lazybones 0.8.1](https://twitter.com/gvmtool/status/591149663782359040) available on GVM
*   Dan Woods highlights Ratpack 0.9.15's Groovy extensions [easily transform RxJava Observables into Ratpack Promises](https://twitter.com/danveloper/status/590950625254354944)

## Podcasts

*   [Groovy podcast episode 11](https://twitter.com/groovypodcast/status/590970033410547713) available

## Screencasts

*   The NetBeans team recorded a screencast about Minecraft Forge showcasing its [Gradle support](https://twitter.com/netbeans/status/592059252702851072)

## Books

*   [Groovy in Action, 2nd edition, now in proof-reading stage](https://twitter.com/mittie/status/591272887786569730)!
*   New book, in Portuguese, “[Falando de Grails](http://www.casadocodigo.com.br/products/livro-grails)”

## Code snippets

*   [Load JSON data into Neo4J with Groovy](https://gist.github.com/jexp/7c6997242c001abfb2cd) and Cypher

## Jobs

*   A [job for beer lovers and Grails experts](https://twitter.com/sbglasius/status/590575191119507459)
    
## Google+ posts

*   New improvements to Tim Roes’ [Groovy Playground](https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TimRoes/posts/f5LrmstNqTE?cfem=1)

## Events

*   GR8Conf Europe will feature [more Groovy puzzlers](https://twitter.com/gr8conf/status/592899671519027201)
*   [Grails event driven plugins](https://twitter.com/gr8conf/status/592898886848671747) at GR8Conf Europe by Göran Ehrsson