The commons-configuration team is pleased to announce the Commons 
Configuration 1.0-rc1 release! 

http://commons.apache.org/configuration/

Tools to assist in the reading of configuration/preferences files in various 
formats 

Changes in this version include:

  New Features:

o HierarchicalConfigurationXMLReader stores comments as text nodes. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-132. Thanks to Oliver Heger. 
o project.xml contains bad dependencies. Issue: CONFIGURATION-122. Thanks to 
  Ricardo Gladwell. 
o clearXmlProperty doesn't remove list properties completely. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-64. Thanks to Brent Worden. 
o new ConfigurationDynaBean. Issue: CONFIGURATION-183. Thanks to Ricardo 
  Gladwell. 
o new ConfigurationMap and ConfigurationSet. Issue: CONFIGURATION-185. Thanks 
  to Ricardo Gladwell. 
o Added save methods in XMLConfiguration similar to PropertiesConfiguration 
  to save the configuration to another file. Issue: CONFIGURATION-114. 
o Added a save() method to PropertiesConfiguration and save(Writer out), 
  save(OutputStream out), save(OutputStream out, String encoding) to 
  BasePropertiesConfiguration. 
o Direct support of XML via DOM. New classes DOMConfiguration and 
  HierarchicalDOMConfiguration. 
o Changed CompositeConfiguration to extend from AbstractConfiuration. This 
  means that the behavior of CompositeConfiguration is much similar to others 
  like PropertiesConfiguration in handling of missing keys, interpolation, 
  etc.. Previously CompositeConfiguration had quite a few differences. 
o The Configuration interface now supports BigDecimal and BigInteger numbers. 
o ConfigurationException is now thrown by public methods instead of Exception 
  or IOException or whatnot. 
o For configuration based on properties files, allow characters like \n etc 
  to be escaped and unescaped. 
o New DatabaseConfiguration that uses a database to store the properties. It 
  supports 2 table structures : one table per configuration (2 colums 
  key/value) one table for multiple configurations (2 columns key/value + 1 
  column for the name of the configuration) 
o ConfigurationFactory now supports the hierarchicalDom4j element in 
  configuration definition file 
o ConfigurationFactory now supports two types of properties files, additional 
  and override. Additional properties add each other together. Override 
  override each other. This allows you to have a single property that is 
  either aggregated from a number of sources, or have a property that is 
  overridden according to a specific order of sources. 
o Added AbstractConfiguration to make it easier to create subclasses by only 
  having to implement the methods required. 

  Fixed bugs:

o Problem adding property XMLConfiguration. Issue: CONFIGURATION-91. Thanks 
  to Ricardo Gladwell. 
o DatabaseConfiguration doesn't support List properties. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-18. 
o Fixed several bugs related to XMLConfiguration: Can't add a new property as 
  an attribute in XMLConfiguration XMLConfiguration doesn't support attribute 
  names with a dot XMLConfiguration doesn't ignore comments 
  XMLConfiguration.save() doesn't escape reserved characters 
o List values are now properly stored as comma separated values in the 
  Properties object returned by ConfigurationConverter.getProperties() Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-98. 
o Tokens like ${ref} in a PropertyConfiguration are now properly saved. 
  Issue: CONFIGURATION-174. 
o The getList() method of a CompositeConfiguration now returns the list 
  composed of the elements in the first matching configuration and the 
  additional elements found in the in memory configuration. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-127. 
o SubsetConfiguration returns a List on getList(). AbstractConfiguration 
  wouldn't properly deal with a List, only with a Container for getList()! 
  Thanks to jschaible for the unit test. 
o Reapply the ConfigurationXMLDocument that went missing during migration out 
  of sandbox. 
o ClassPropertiesConfiguration Additions Use the classloader of class that is 
  provided by the constructor. Add a constructor that indicates whether to 
  use relative or absolute. Change getPropertyStream to utilize the relative 
  or absolute flag. Add a test case that checks that absolute paths work. 
o JNDIConfiguration.getKeys() Addition The JNDIConfiguration.getKeys() method 
  was returning an unsupported operation error. However, this is an important 
  method to have supported. 
o CompositeConfiguration.getKeys() Fix The CompositeConfiguration.getKeys() 
  method was returning an unordered list of configuration values. However, 
  many apps expect the order that keys are returned to be the order they are 
  added into the properties file. 

  Changes:

o Removed the DOM4J implementations in favor of the DOM ones. 
  DOMConfiguration has been renamed to XMLConfiguration, and 
  HierarchicalDOMConfiguration to HierarchicalXMLConfiguration. The elements 
  parsed by the ConfigurationFactory have been changed accordingly. 
o Introduced a ConversionException thrown when the value of a property is not 
  compatible the type requested. It replaces the ClassCastException and the 
  NumberFormatException thrown previously. 
o Update build to not include test configuration files in resulting jar. 
o Refactored JNDIConfiguration to use AbstractConfiguration. 
o Fixed invalid subsets by refactoring out the subset logic into a 
  SubsetConfiguration. Issue: CONFIGURATION-76. 
o Apply ASL 2.0 license. Thanks to Jeff Painter for scripting the conversion! 
o Removed "defaults" from BaseConfiguration. Defaults are now done via using 
  a CompositeConfiguration, either directly or via a ConfigurationFactory. if 
  you want to save changes made to a Configuration, then you use a 
  CompositeConfiguration and get back the inMemoryConfiguration that has the 
  delta of changes. Added a bit of documentation on this. 
o Enhancement: Configuration Comparator. Issue: CONFIGURATION-154. 
o BaseConfiguration: containsKey ignores default properties. I have changed 
  it so that now the defaults are paid attention to. Issue: CONFIGURATION-54. 
o Change all Vector objects to List objects. 
o AbstractConfiguration addProperty now delegates to an abstract 
  addPropertyDirect implemented by BaseConfiguration. 
o Changed getString() method to throw a NoSuchElementException instead of "" 
  if the configuration property doesn't exist. 

  Removed features:

o ConfigurationXMLDocument removed until post 1.0.  

Have fun!
-The commons-configuration team