Just in time for Christmas, here is the first release candidate of our new Scala distribution: Scala 2.7.3 RC1. This new version is mainly intended as a maintenance release: it fixes a number of bugs and improves on various aspects of the existing code. There are no new features, however; they are being added instead to a new development branch, currently in its early stages, that will become the next major Scala release sometime next year. If no particular problems are found with this first release candidate, a final Scala 2.7.3 release should follow in a few weeks. Please read below for further details.

The final version of NetBeans 6.5 is available, and the official Scala plugin for NetBeans 6.5, developed by Caoyuan Deng, is also available for download! In this new version of the Scala plugin for NetBeans:

• Much better code-completion
• Two new color themes: Twilight and Emacs Standard
• Various bugs fixes
• Not perfect, but fairly stable
• Works well with NetBeans Maven plugin

To download the Scala plugin for NetBeans 6.5, please go to the download page on SourceForge. This version will also work on NetBeans RC2; if you have a previous version of the Scala plugin for NetBeans installed, you can upgrade to this version. For more information, please see http://wiki.netbeans.org/Scala.

The article published in Polish edition of Software Developer's Journal "XML w większej Scali" (XML in a larger Scala) is available on-line: http://www.erudis.pl/pl/publikacje/scala-xml. The article is written in Polish and contains:

• introduction to the Scala language
• information on how to run Scala program from IDE and using Jakarta Ant
• important features of Scala (from the practical point of view): JavaBeans, containers, closures, case classes, etc.
• XML parsing facility available in Scala

The example application attached to the article is created mostly for Java programmers, in fact the article is "javaish", i.e. Scala is presented in such a way to be easily accesible to Java programmers.

Our external maintainers effort has been extremely successful so far: thanks to the great help of the Scala community, several previously neglected components of the Scala system are being refreshed and improved at a surprising pace. However, we are still looking for help with a few remaining modules. Specifically, our XML infrastructure would benefit from some updates: if you are an XML wizard, and you are keen on Scala, this is the right task for you!

If you are unsure about maintaining a whole module, you can of course look at our Trac database, where in particular several smaller issues are assigned to scala_community. Just investigate any of the open tickets, and start writing your code; you can easily obtain from here the Scala source code (also from SVN) and set up your development system (also using an IDE). The rest of the Scala community will be happy to assist you with your work. All contributions are welcome!!

Version 1.5 of ScalaCheck is now available. ScalaCheck is a tool for automatic unit testing of your Scala and Java programs, developed by Rickard Nilsson. ScalaCheck allows you to define general properties about your code units, while the tool handles all test data generation for you: you can run thousands of unit tests automatically without writing and maintaining an endless number of test cases. ScalaCheck started out as a Scala port of the Haskell library QuickCheck, and has since evolved and been extended with features not found in Haskell QuickCheck.

Version 1.5 of ScalaCheck introduces support for Scala 2.7.2 and various minor feature additions. Please visit http://www.scalacheck.org for change history, user guide, API reference and more.