[aspectj-dev] AspectJ 5 Milestone build 1 now available

[Adrian Colyer <adrian_colyer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm pleased to announce an early christmas present for AspectJ users - the 
first milestone build of AspectJ 5 is now available.

You can download it from:
* http://download.eclipse.org/technology/ajdt/aspectj-1.5.0M1.jar

or the mirror at:
* http://www.aspectprogrammer.org/dist/aspectj-1.5.0M1.jar

See the README linked from the AspectJ home page 
(http://www.eclipse.org/aspectj) for an overview of this release, or the 
AspectJ 5 Developer's Notebook (also linked) for full details of the 
language and tools changes. This release provides support for binary 
weaving of Java 5 classes generated by a Java 5 (javac) compiler.

Some of you may recall we set out a plan to deliver Java 5 support in 
AspectJ in three phases (see below). We're actually a little ahead of 
plan, because the M1 release also contains full support for pointcut 
matching with annotations. For example:

  before() : call(@RestrictedAccess * org.xyz..*.(..)) {
      //...
  }

 In addition to matching annotations with the existing pointcut 
designators, we also support several new annotation-matching designators.

Please try it out and let us know what you think. We reserve the right to 
continue revising the language definition between milestone releases based 
on user feedback, and will stabilize with the release of the first AspectJ 
5 release candidate.

Thanks to Ramnivas Laddad, Ron Bodkin, and the ABC team for their input 
into the AspectJ 5 language design.
-- The AspectJ Team


Outline Plan for AspectJ 5:

> The first major milestone (1.5.0M1) simply ensures that AspectJ's weaver 

> does the right thing when confronted with Java 5 class files (ie. no 
> extended pointcut syntax etc., but does understand covariance, varargs, 
> bridge methods, enums, etc.). I'd like to reach this point by Christmas 
> (or before, depending on the order we decide to attack things in). 
> 
> The second major milestone (1.5.0M2) extends the pointcut matching to 
> support generics and annotations in pointcut expressions. We can do this 

> ahead of the full JDT support being available as this function is 
> implemented in our weaver. With M2, you will be able to compile Java 5 
> sources using the Java 5 compiler, and then (binary) weave them with 
> AspectJ, taking full advantage of Java 5 features in join point 
matching. 
> This will give an equivalent level of Java 5 support to the other aspect 

> approaches out there right now. I'd like to reach this point by the end 
of 
> January.
> 
> The third major milestone will be 1.5.0rc1, with the full source-level 
> support for Java 5 features. I'd like to reach this point by the end of 
> March.