This week in #Scala (06/01/2012)

Happy new year and welcome to another this week in #Scala!

New Stuff

Lift 2.4-RC1 is now out with plenty of bug fixes since the previous release. 2.4 final should be heading our way very soon!

Specs2 version 1.7.1 by Eric Torreborre (@etorreborre) is out! This release includes various bug fixes and new features, including the ability to enforce dependencies between packages.

Groll 1.0.0 has been released. Groll is a sbt plugin to view and navigate the Git history.

Setak has been updated, adding support for testing #Akka non-stable systems.

Akka 2.0 pre-release Milestone 2 is now available. This new release includes another 70 closed tickets, better documentation and much more, click through for more details.

Scala IO 0.3.0 has been released, with plenty of improvements and fixes – follow the link for more information.

Shapeless 1.0.1 has been released. This is just a minor update but still includes several useful fixes and improvements. Shapeless also has a development mailing list which can be found here.

Blogs and tutorials

•  Viktor Klang (@viktorklang) talks Akka and Scala on @scalatypes
• Checkout this blog about Scala on the Web by Daniel Sobral (@dcsobral)
• Is Akka faster than Erlang? Scala, Akka and Erlang Actor Benchmarks by Franz Bettag (@fbettag)
• Several cool blogs by Hendy Irawan (@hendyirawan) which compare Java and Scala code snippets. Scala closures vs Guava collection functions, Graph Analysis with Scala and Spring Data Neo4j and Coding JSON REST JAX-RS Service Application to Access Neo4j Database in Scala.
• Maciek Makowski (@mmakowski) tests using Github as a Tutorial Hosting Platform using Literate Specifications with specs2.
• Finally, the Akka team blog is live!

As usual feel free to drop me a mail or message @markglh on twitter with any Scala news!