The commons-configuration team is pleased to announce the Commons 
Configuration 1.5 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 A new method interpolatedConfiguration() was added to 
  AbstractConfiguration. This method returns a configuration with the same 
  type and content as the original configuration, however all variables have 
  been resolved. Issue: CONFIGURATION-273. 
o There is a new configuration implementation EnvironmentConfiguration, which 
  provides access to (OS) environment variables. On Java >= 1.5 this class 
  can be directly used; on earlier versions a dependency to ant is required. 
  Issue: CONFIGURATION-284. Thanks to Nicolas De Loof. 
o A new method registerEntityId() was added to XMLConfiguration, which allows 
  to register URLs for entities. A new default implementation of the 
  EntityResolver interface handles these entities automatically. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-290. 
o DefaultConfigurationBuilder will now notify registered error listeners 
  about optional configuration sources that could not be created. Before 
  exceptions thrown by optional configurations were swallowed Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-285. 
o The base implementation of clear() in AbstractConfiguration now checks for 
  a potential UnsupportedOperationException when iterating over the existing 
  properties. Issue: CONFIGURATION-277. 
o A new getSource() method was added to CompositeConfiguration and 
  CombinedConfiguration, which returns the child configuration, in which a 
  given property is defined. Issue: CONFIGURATION-215. 
o A SubnodeConfiguration per default does not see certain changes of its 
  parent configuration (e.g. reloads). With a new boolean parameter of 
  HierarchicalConfiguration's configurationAt() method a mode can be enabled, 
  in which the subnode configuration checks for such changes and reconstructs 
  itself if necessary. Issue: CONFIGURATION-264. 
o DataConfiguration now supports java.net.InetAddress, 
  javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress, and Java 5 enumeration types. 
  Properties are converted to these types using the new generic getters. 
o Generic get methods have been added to DataConfiguration (get(), getArray() 
  and getList()) 
o File configurations can now be saved to FTP URLs, or any other URL protocol 
  supporting data output. Issue: CONFIGURATION-249. 
o Date objects are now supported in ASCII plist files. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-261. 

  Fixed bugs:

o Resolving of variables with the prefix const (constant fields) caused a 
  ClassCastException under certain circumstances if non-String fields were 
  involved. This has been fixed. Issue: CONFIGURATION-299. 
o A bug in XMLConfiguration caused that attributes of the root element could 
  not be changed. This has been fixed. Issue: CONFIGURATION-296. 
o The subset() method of HierarchicalConfiguration now takes the value of the 
  subset's root node into account if it is not ambigous. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-295. 
o Nodes added to a XMLConfiguration using the addNodes() method could lose 
  their value when the configuration was saved. This is now fixed. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-294. 
o New copy() and append() methods have been added to AbstractConfiguration. 
  They replace the methods with the same names in ConfigurationUtils, which 
  do not handle all features of AbstractConfiguration properly (e.g. list 
  delimiters in property values are incorrectly treated). To avoid such 
  problems, the new methods should be used. Issue: CONFIGURATION-272. 
o The addNodes() method of hierarchical file-based configurations now 
  correctly triggers an auto save. Issue: CONFIGURATION-291. 
o HierarchicalConfiguration.addNodes() now resets the reference property of 
  all nodes to be added. This fixes a problem with XMLConfiguration, which 
  now detects the added nodes as new and treats them correctly when the 
  configuration is saved. Issue: CONFIGURATION-287. 
o ConfigurationUtils.convertToHierarchical() now correctly deals with 
  property values containing escaped list delimiters. This also affects 
  CombinedConfiguration when sub configurations with such property values are 
  contained. Issue: CONFIGURATION-283. 
o AbstractConfiguration.addProperty() now correctly deals with list and array 
  properties if delimiter parsing is disabled. Issue: CONFIGURATION-275. 
o The default expression engine used by HierarchicalConfiguration instances 
  is now lazily initialized. This avoids NullPointerExceptions in certain 
  server environments after a redeploy. Issue: CONFIGURATION-282. 
o Cycles in the JNDI tree no longer cause a stack overflow in 
  JNDIConfiguration. Issue: CONFIGURATION-281. 
o Using file-based configurations in auto-save mode together with a reloading 
  strategy could cause data loss. This has been fixed. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-280. Thanks to Roman Kurmanowytsch. 
o A PropertiesConfiguration that was created from a non existing file lost 
  its content when it was saved. This problem has been solved. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-279. 
o PropertiesConfiguration now supports escaping the escape character for list 
  delimiters. Issue: CONFIGURATION-274. 
o PropertiesConfiguration no longer escapes the list delimiter on saving if 
  the list delimiter has been disabled. Issue: CONFIGURATION-269. 
o List properties and properties containing interpolated variables are now 
  properly saved by INIConfiguration. Issue: CONFIGURATION-270. 
o INIConfiguration flushes the output at the end of a save operation. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-267. 
o byte[] properties are properly saved as data fields in the plist 
  configurations (PropertyListConfiguration and 
  XMLPropertyListConfiguration). 
o The object getters in DataConfiguration with no default value (i.e 
  getURL(key)) now throw a NoSuchElementException if the flag 
  throwExceptionOnMissing is set. 
o XMLConfiguration used to drop attributes when an element's value was a 
  list. This has been fixed. Issue: CONFIGURATION-263. 
o Fixed a potential issue in DatabaseConfiguration where an error on closing 
  a statement would prevent the connection from being closed. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-180. 

  Changes:

o Some of the dependencies in the m2 pom have been updated to be more 
  consistent. Thanks to Jörg Schaible. 
o The dependency to commons-logging was updated to the current version 1.1. 
  Older versions of commons-logging will still work. Thanks to Jörg Schaible. 
o The dependencies to commons-codec and commons-jxpath have been marked as 
  optional. They are not required by the core classes. Thanks to Nicolas De 
  Loof. 
o When delimiter parsing was disabled for XMLConfiguration, saving and 
  loading the configuration accidently added escape characters to properties 
  containing the list delimiter character. This has been fixed. It is now 
  also possible to escape the escape character itself. Issue: 
  CONFIGURATION-268. 
o The return value of FileConfiguration.getFile() is now always consistent 
  with the result of getURL(). Issue: CONFIGURATION-253. 
o INIConfiguration uses the platform's specific line separator instead of the 
  Windows line separator. 
o For hierarchical file-based configurations the auto-save mechanism is now 
  also triggered if a subnode configuration is changed. In such a case the 
  new event type EVENT_SUBNODE_CHANGED will be sent to registered listeners. 
  Issue: CONFIGURATION-265. 
o ConfigurationInterpolator now also invokes the default lookup object for 
  variables with a prefix that could not be resolved by their associated 
  lookup object. Issue: CONFIGURATION-266. Thanks to Tobias Noebel. 
o XMLPropertyListConfiguration no longer requires commons-digester and 
  commons-beanutils to work. 
o Fixed INIConfiguration to handle the quoted values and the lines containing 
  a value and a comment.  

Have fun!
-The commons-configuration team