# Groovy Weekly #75

> Discover the latest Groovy ecosystem news: Ratpack 1.0 approaching, Gradle 2.6, Grails updates, GR8Conf US talks, and insightful articles.

Author: [Guillaume Laforge](https://glaforge.dev/) | Published: 2015-08-15 | Topics: groovy, groovy-weekly | Canonical: https://glaforge.dev/posts/2015/08/15/groovy-weekly-75/


The not-so-weekly Groovy column is back for a summer edition on the shores of the Atlantic ocean (at least, that’s where I am now!) and there was a lot to catch up with in terms of news!

Ratpack is almost at 1.0, only a couple of weeks to go for the mythical release, whereas Gradle arrived in version 2.6, and some updates to the two main Grails lines were out too.

You’ll notice lots of delightful content from GR8Conf US 2015! So many talks to watch (and slides to look at), if you didn’t get a chance to attend the conference.

## Releases

*   [Ratpack 0.9.19](http://ratpack.io/versions/0.9.19) released, the last milestone before 1.0!
*   [Gradle 2.6](https://discuss.gradle.org/t/gradle-2-6-released/11092) released
*   [Grails 3.0.4](https://github.com/grails/grails-core/releases/tag/v3.0.4) released
*   [Grails 2.5.1](https://github.com/grails/grails-core/releases/tag/v2.5.1) released
*   [Geb 0.12.1](https://twitter.com/GebFramework/status/628475584092377089) released
*   [GrooScript 1.2.0](http://grooscript.org/) released
*   [Grain 0.6.5](https://twitter.com/grainframework/status/628862549916839936) released with improved Asciidoctor support
*   [Windows installer for Groovy 2.4.4](https://twitter.com/keeganwitt/status/630918051425353728) made available by Keegan Witt
*   [Grails GrooScript 1.1.1](https://twitter.com/grooscript/status/631151629845327872) plugin released
*   [OrientDB Groovy 0.1.0](https://twitter.com/eugenekamenev/status/626623038931488768) released
*   [TypeScript Gradle plugin 1.5](https://twitter.com/sothmann/status/625756046674497536) released with all the new TypeScript 1.5 compiler options

## Articles

*   Open-sourcing the [LinkedIn Gradle plugin and DSL for Apache Hadoop](https://engineering.linkedin.com/hadoop/open-sourcing-linkedin-gradle-plugin-and-dsl-apache-hadoop) by Alex Bain
*   [Groovy: Java's gateway drug](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/groovy-javas-gateway-drug-owen-rubel), by Owen Rubel
*   A [Scala vs Groovy functional programming showdown](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scala-vs-groovy-functional-programming-showdown-owen-rubel) by Owen Rubel
*   A [curated list of awesome Groovy libraries](https://github.com/kdabir/awesome-groovy), frameworks, resources, collected by Kunal Dabir
*   [Feature matrix comparison between Gradle and Maven](http://gradle.org/maven_vs_gradle/), on Gradle's site
*   On InfoQ, Abel Avram writes about [Gradle 2.5's continuous build](http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/07/gradle-2-5) feature
*   Julien Ponge, creator of the Golo dynamic language, [compares a non trivial Maven build and a Gradle approach](https://julien.ponge.org/blog/an-experiment-in-maven-to-gradle-migration/)
*   [Have a Groovy Spring](https://www.accelebrate.com/blog/have-a-groovy-spring/) by Ken Kousen
*   [Zero to Ratpack](http://kyleboon.org/blog/2015/08/05/zero-to-ratpack/), by Kyle Boon, on more concrete use cases & examples for Ratpack
*   [Stubbing external service interactions using Ratpack](http://kyleboon.org/blog/2015/07/18/stubbing-service-interactions-when-testing-microservices/) by Kyle Boon
*   [Build high performance JVM microservices with Ratpack and Spring Boot](http://www.infoq.com/articles/Ratpack-and-Spring-Boot) by Dan Woods on InfoQ
*   [GR8Conf US 2015 recap](https://objectpartners.com/2015/08/03/gr8conf-us-2015-conference-recap/) by Craig Atkinson from Object Partners
*   Peter Ledbrook on [exploring Grails 3](http://blog.cacoethes.co.uk/groovyandgrails/exploring-grails-3)
*   [Getting started with Asciidoctor and Gradle](http://jworks.nl/2015/07/31/getting-started-with-asciidoctor/) by Erik Pragt
*   [Grails Filter at top of Filter invocation chain](http://www.tothenew.com/blog/grails-filter-at-top-of-filter-invocation-chain/) by Sandeep Poonia
*   Lovin Saini on [when details in principal object of Spring Security in Grails are not sufficient](http://www.tothenew.com/blog/when-details-in-principal-object-of-spring-security-are-not-sufficient/)
*   [Integrating Amazon S3 in a Grails application](http://www.tothenew.com/blog/integrating-amazon-s3-in-grails-application/) by Komal Jain
*   [Creating Android applications with Groovy](http://www.tothenew.com/blog/creating-android-application-with-groovy/) by Simranjit Kour
*   [Closure delegate using Groovy “with” method and decorating code with multiple assignments](http://www.tothenew.com/blog/closure-delegate-using-groovy-with-method-and-decorating-code-with-multiple-assignments/) by Tarun Pareek
*   [Upgrading a Grails app from version 1.3.7 to 2.4.4](https://dzone.com/articles/upgrading-a-grails-app-from-version-137-to-version) by Manvendra Singh on DZone
*   André Steingreß blogged about [reconnecting JDBC connections with Grails](http://blog.andresteingress.com/2015/08/14/grails-hibernate-jdbc-connection/)

## Interviews

*   A slice of [Groovy's hip use of JFrog's Artifactory & Bintray, and of Gradle & TeamCity](http://devops.com/2015/08/13/slice-groovys-hip-use-jfrog-artifactory-bintray-gradle-teamcity/), from an interview of Guillaume Laforge on DevOps.com
*   [Luke Daley interviewed for Voxxed about Ratpack](https://www.voxxed.com/blog/2015/08/ratpack-the-java-8-web-framework-for-independent-thinkers/), the “Java 8 web framework for independent thinkers”

## Presentations

*   GR8Conf US 2015
    *   [Vert.x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xeh2IExt8rA) presented by Ryan Applegate ([slides](https://speakerdeck.com/rappleg/getting-groovy-with-vert-dot-x))
    *   [RESTful Web Services in Grails 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tXoPTZmB_4) presented by Jenn Strater ([slides](http://jlstrater.github.io/restful-grails3/#/))
    *   [Practical and Stupidly Impractical Groovy DSLs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuL3QkSSXy8) presented by Craig Burke ([slides](http://www.craigburke.com/practical-groovy-dsl/))
    *   [Richer Data History with Event Sourcing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWnuhlBwNh8) presented by Stephen Pember
    *   [Groovy Goodness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugy4wSEy_A0), presented by Hubert Klein Ikkink ([slides](https://github.com/mrhaki/gr8conf2015us/tree/master/groovy-goodness))
    *   [Groovy DevOps in the Cloud](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7G6z7Lqxqtw) presented by Andrey Adamovich ([slides](http://www.slideshare.net/aestasit/groovy-devops-in-the-cloud-for-gr8conf-us-2015))
    *   [GVM: The Groovy enVironment Manager](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6WOnN8uJdM), presented by Marco Vermeulen ([slides](http://marcovermeulen.github.io/gvm-talk/#/))
    *   [Jenkins + Groovy with the Job DSL Plugin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSK_JaBacE0) presented by Matt Sheehan ([slides](http://sheehan.github.io/job-dsl-slides/))
    *   [Asset Pipeline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodl0QXkVag) presented by David Estes ([slides](https://github.com/GR8conf/GR8ConfUS2015/tree/master/asset-pipeline))
    *   [The support tools necessary to effectively build a Microservice Architecture](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey7sGdmCX2Y) presented by Cameron Fieber from Netflix
    *   [Microservices: The Right Way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk_VlKUDKMA) presented by Dan Woods ([slides](http://www.slideshare.net/danveloper/microservices-the-right-way))
    *   [Idiomatic Spock](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxGQrJxjF-s) presented by Rob Fletcher ([slides](https://github.com/robfletcher/spock-katas))
    *   [Automated Strategies for deploying Grails from Dev to Prod](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I8fyX7qnoU) presented by Eric Helgeson ([slides](https://github.com/erichelgeson/GR8ConfUS2015/blob/585814b5abd383deee512a2f4767d305fa364e18/presentations/Automation%20strategies%20for%20deploying%20your%20Grails%20app%20from%20Dev%20to%20Prod/Automation-Strategies-Eric-Helgeson-gr8-2015.pdf))
    *   [Grails Mocking on Steroids](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdrqW22kHS4) presented by Christian Oestreich ([slides](http://grails-plugin-consortium.github.io/mocking-on-steroids-presentation/?full#1))
    *   [Geb Functional Testing Unleashed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpepX441E5g) presented by Craig Atkinson ([slides](http://craigatk.github.io/geb/#/))
    *   [Nebula: Netflix's OSS Gradle Plugins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWPMYysLgis) presented by Rob Spieldenner ([slides](https://speakerdeck.com/rspieldenner/nebula-netflixs-oss-gradle-plugins))
    *   [Securing Ratpack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5erGrh7n_s) presented by Jeff Beck ([slides](http://beckje01.com/talks/gr8us-2015-sec-ratpack.html#/))
    *   [Cassandra and Grails](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU0kCAyxSfQ) presented by Jeff Beck ([slides](http://beckje01.com/talks/gr8us-2015-cassandra-grails.html#/))
    *   [Spock on Android](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onwoLeHRxl0) by Andrew Reitz ([slides](http://andrewreitz.com/gr8conf-us-spock-android-2015/#/))
    *   [Groovy and Scala: Friends or Foes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymbvs4qoQJU) presented by Marco Vermeulen ([slides](http://marcovermeulen.github.io/groovy-and-scala-talk/#/))
    *   [Getting Groovy on Android](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_p2L47gvgk) presented by Andrew Reitz ([slides](https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=29181012CB08492E!882&ithint=file%2cpptx&app=PowerPoint&authkey=!AGwH3YhuhRS1P2s))
    *   [Source to Deployment with Gradle and Docker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY5mYcw3XHk) presented by John Engelman ([slides](https://speakerdeck.com/johnrengelman/source-to-deployment-with-gradle-and-docker))
    *   [Learn how to get Groovy on Google Glass and Android Wear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-49ng22DHkw) presented by Ryan Vanderwerf
    *   [Little Did He Know...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBv5y2O1oTY) presented by Burt Beckwith
    *   [Gradle: State of the Build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FFpngCk52c) presented by Luke Daley
    *   [Hacking the Grails Spring Security 2.0 Plugin](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-f0vEWQ9Os), presented by Burt Beckwith
    *   [Ratpack: Under the Hood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT8S-dMLSVM) presented by Luke Daley ([slides](https://github.com/ratpack/presentation-ratpack-under-the-hood-gr8conf-us-2015))
    *   Slides on [GrooScript](https://github.com/jondejong/GR8confUS-Grooscript) by Jon DeJong
    *   Slides on [introduction to event sourcing](http://www.slideshare.net/StevePember/gr8conf-us-2015-intro-to-event-sourcing-with-groovy) by Steve Pember
    *   Slides on [Java 8 functional programming for Groovy developers](https://speakerdeck.com/johnrengelman/java-8-functional-programming-for-groovy-developers) by John Engelman
    *   Slides on [reactive options for Groovy](http://www.slideshare.net/StevePember/gr8conf-us-2015-reactive-options-for-groovy) by Steve Pember
    *   Slides on [Angular.JS in a Groovy world](http://www.craigburke.com/angular-groovy-world/) by Craig Burke
    * Slides on [infrastructure automation with Gradle and Puppet](http://www.slideshare.net/aestasit/infrastructure-automation-with-gradle-and-puppet-for-gr8conf-us-2015) by Andrey Adamovitch
*   [Eclipse & Gradle, the best of both worlds](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/eclipse-gradle), at EclipseCon, by Hans Dockter and Etienne Studer
*   Dan Woods [Ratpack web framework](http://fr.slideshare.net/danveloper/ratpack-web-framework) presentation at UberConf

## Tweets

*   Keegan Witt morphed a [3 hour running Bash script of HDFS commands into a 10 seconds Groovy script](https://twitter.com/keeganwitt/status/613718739217948672) using the Java APIs
*   The [killer app for Groovy is Gradle](https://twitter.com/danveloper/status/626768428498579456), says Ken Kousen
*   Erik Pragt spotted a [nice Groovy in Action, 2nd edition, review](https://twitter.com/epragt/status/631440665981923328) by Andrew Binstock, on Oracle's Java Magazine
*   [Redis session storage coming to Ratpack](https://twitter.com/ratpackweb/status/631781599621677056) courtesy of Jeff Beck
*   [Gradle 2.6](https://twitter.com/sdkmanager/status/630732523706949632) available on GVM
*   [GrooScript's source code evolution](https://twitter.com/grooscript/status/630094999091343360) video
*   A video of a [Groovy ecosystem variant of the 2048](https://twitter.com/dhirajmahapatro/status/630030753758343168) game
*   Iván López is working on a [Grails framework postgres-extensions plugin](https://twitter.com/ilopmar/status/627801822347022336)
*   Dan Woods learned that [Bintray is using Ratpack](https://twitter.com/danveloper/status/627350450870820864)
*   Marco Vermeulen is excited with the [Gradle continuous build feature](https://twitter.com/marc0der/status/627264041677901824)
*   [Another Groovy in Action 2nd edition picture](https://twitter.com/monzdrpower/status/627150274453487616), from Epam Systems in Saint-Petersburg
*   [GVM is going to be renamed SDKman](https://twitter.com/javazquez/status/627147102779367424)
*   Robert Fletcher discovered [Spock's @Use annotation](https://twitter.com/rfletcherEW/status/626889088738664449) for using extension methods in tests
*   MrHaki shares a link to a [LiveReload integration with Gradle](http://asciidoctor.github.io/asciidoctor-gradle-examples/#_livereload_html_example)
*   Colin Harrington shares the ingredients of an [awesome sauce for Android development](https://twitter.com/ColinHarrington/status/626784519475965952): SwissKnife + Android Spock + Grooid tools
*   [Grails 3.0.4](https://twitter.com/sdkmanager/status/626321911056887808) available on GVM
*   [Grails 2.5.1](https://twitter.com/sdkmanager/status/626361104114053120) available on GVM
*   Burt Beckwith uploaded the [documentation for the Grails Spring Security Core plugin](https://twitter.com/burtbeckwith/status/632590650442129408) v3.0.0.M1
*   Victor Mrtez believes Groovy rocks and is going to code another [Jenkins CI plugin with Groovy and Gradle](https://twitter.com/AnInfinite/status/626444888452808704)
*   At [GR8Conf US 2015, the Ratpack team gathered](https://twitter.com/rfletcherEW/status/626599837421686784) to drink Sinatra's favorite drink!

## News

*   [Keegan Witt joined the Groovy team](https://twitter.com/glaforge/status/632669415876763648) as a committer
*   Do you want a [Gradle.com sneak peek](http://gradle.org/gradle-com-sneak-peek/)?
*   Jacob Aae Mikkelsen’s [Grails Diary](http://grydeske.net/news/show/102) week 30
*   Jacob Aae Mikkelsen’s [Grails Diary](http://grydeske.net/news/show/103) week 31
*   Jacob Aae Mikkelsen's [Grails Diary](http://grydeske.net/news/show/104) week 32
*   The 11th edition of the weekly [Groovy Calamari](http://groovycalamari.com/)
*   Marco Vermeulen has started a [Groovy extension module for Scala interop](https://github.com/marcoVermeulen/groovy-scala-extension-module)
*   The [Scriptom](https://github.com/groovy/scriptom) project moved to the Groovy Github organization

## Code snippets

*   A [Groovy STOMP client](https://github.com/bertramdev/gSTOMP-client) by David Estes
*   Russell Hart's [Ratpack workshop code base](https://github.com/ratpack/hands-on-ratpack)
*   Kyle Boon [open sourced his Cellar HQ Ratpack application](https://twitter.com/kyleboon/status/626169879444504576)
*   [Utilize Gradle's idea plugin to set git as your default VCS](https://gist.github.com/danhyun/980319864f75967ccd8a) and to enable the Gradle tool from IntelliJ IDEA, by Danny Hyun
*   Václav Pech [counts wagons in Groovy](http://www.jroller.com/vaclav/entry/wagons_counted) in this algorithmic teaser
*   Circle Stacker [demo app using Groovy, Swiss Knife](https://github.com/pieces029/circle-stacker), and built with Gradle

## Books

*   [Free Gradle books](https://twitter.com/werner_cjd/status/632362950200819712) from O'Reilly
*   Dierk König says that [Groovy in Action, 2nd edition, was #5 in Manning print book bestsellers](https://twitter.com/mittie/status/625320234778525696) a month after appearing

## Podcasts

*   [Groovy Podcast episode 17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii693nUQwV0), recorded at GR8Conf US 2015

## Events

*   [Groovy 2 and Java 8, gotchas & future](http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Groovy-and-Grails-Users/events/224611516/), at the Groovy user group in Austin on August 27th