The committer team behind Eclipse Xtend is proud to announce the availability of Version 2.4. The new release has over 300 bug fixes. The most important enhancements are:
Active Annotations
They are Lisp-like macros for Java (or Xtend). You declare an annotation and explain to the compiler how annotated elements should be translated to Java source code. The compiler will find those annotations on the classpath and execute them during compilation. The IDE and the compiler are fully aware of how annotations contribute to the compilation process, such that content assist, navigation, linking and error messages all reflect the changes appropriately.
You have to see it in action, it is code generation like it should be! Read More
New Type System
Xtend 2.4 has gotten a whole new type system implementation, which not only improves the compilation performance but fixes many many outstanding typing issues. Also the type inference algorithm has become much smarter and even takes the control flow into account for type inference. Xtend can even infer types where other languages such as Scala fail.
Android Support
Xtend is a perfect match for Android development as it relies on the JDK and comes with very little extra dependencies. The new version has special support for debugging Android emulators and some other goodies.
New Language Features
Xtend 2.4 allows to turn local variables and parameters into extension providers, comes with a neat literal syntax for immutable collections, many new operators and some other enhancements.
New IDE Features
The Eclipse plug-in now supports formatting, more quick fixes, more refactorings, better content assist and more little gems which let you get into a smoeeth development flow.
Read the full release notes and get the release
Many Thanks
... to all the committers and contributors who have put this together: Sebastian Zarnekow, Jan Köhnlein, Dennis Hübner, Moritz Eysholdt, Holger Schill, Sebastian Benz, Knut Wannheden, Natalia Ossipova, Anton Kosyakov, Christian Hülsmeier, Stefan Oehme, Ed Merks, Benjamin Schwertfeger, Lieven Lemiengre, Hendrik Eeckhaut, Christoph Kulla, and many more!
