What's New in Grace Framework

Grace inherits the excellent concepts and designs of Grails, and based on this, has undergone significant restructuring to ensure that each module is independent and decoupled, such as Grace API, Grace Boot, Grace CLI, Grace Plugin API, Grace Spring Boot, Grace Util. Meanwhile, in order to better focus on maintenance and upgrades, Grace also merged the previously spun-off modules, Converters plugin, GSP, Grace Test Support. Grace Boot, as an AutoConfiguration, it will load all other modules and plugins. Grace follows good modular design, and these modules can be used independently in Spring Boot applications.

Spring is the foundation for Grace, which is built on top of Spring Boot. To better support Spring Boot and integrate with other Spring ecosystems, Grace has rewritten Plugin.doWithSpring() using Spring Boot's Auto-configuration, which also reduces redundant configurations and provides significant performance improvements. Grace has also provided Configuration Metadata files include in Grace plugins' jars, the files are designed to let IDE developers offer contextual help and “code completion” as users are working with application.properties or application.yaml files. So, a Grace plugin is an extended Spring Boot Starter.

It is worth mentioning that Grace supports all current versions of Spring Boot, including 2.7, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, and the upcoming 3.5. This makes the upgrade path easier and more manageable.

Grace has been actively developing, bringing numerous improvements and new features, including Plugins, GSP, Console, Shell, and Profiles. Of course, it has also fixed a large number of legacy defects left in Grails 5, this makes developers happy.