Oh yes, Jackson 1.8 was released a while ago... :-)
Whoa. Looks like I forgot to blog about something rather big; the release of Jackson 1.8.0. This is mostly because I did that shortly before going for a nice long vacation, and by the time I came back, I had forgotten most of it. Although was reminded by the release in form of a nice long list of new bug reports. :-)
At any rate, I did write something about the release; so as a background, here are contemporary accounts of the event:
- Jackson 1.8.0 released! (at Jackson User Group)
- JacksonRelease18 - list of all included features (at FasterXML Jackson Wiki)
Actually, both of above enumerate all the new features, so I can't add much more at detailed level.
But one thing that may not be obvious is that 1.8 was a huge step forward to allow full power of configurability for Jackson Modules; concept which was added in 1.7, but that really became useful enough for major extensions in 1.8. As a result all the exciting modules (esp. ones at FasterXML GitHub) -- including "Jackson XML module" for XML-based serialization, deserialization; Hibernate Jackson module, and even Jackson Scala module -- require 1.8 as their baseline. And at least XML and Scala modules were driving some of improvements made to module interface.
Another main goal was to focus on paying down sort of "feature debt" -- something similar to technical debt, but relating to the fact that sometimes oldest feature-requests tend to be forgotten, and development focuses more on latest ideas. In 1.8, then, we saw completion of many long-standing (and sometimes, long-ignored) feature requests.
Anyway -- it has been a while since 1.8.0 was released; and at this point I am focused on starting work on 1.9.0. While only one new feature has been completed, there is lots of work behind the scenes; much of which is aimed at helping modules (or working on specific modules). But more on these ventures in future blog posts; stay tuned!
