A new beta of Smack (3.0.0 Beta 1) was released today. It’s been a long time since the last release, which is easy to tell by the length of the changelog. The beta represents major new functionality. Some highlights:
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Much better control over connections, including the ability to re-connect after a dropped connection.
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Many new XEP’s supported and better XMPP RFC compliance.
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Major re-factoring of how chats work.
All this is very good news. The bad news is that this new release isn’t a drop-in replacement for the old version of Smack. We had to make API changes in order to support the features above and we decided to make the move to Java 5 at the same time (might as well break a lot if you’re going to break a little). The switch to Java 5 in particular will be a deal-breaker for some. We’ll likely continue making bug fixes in the 2.x branch as compensation.
All these changes have been driven by work being done on Spark. In fact, Jingle support should officially land in Smack before the 3.0 beta period is up (you may have seen Jingle in the roadmap already). Let us know what you think of the beta. We’d also love your feedback on what we can do to make the transition smoother.