Spring Framework
The Spring Framework provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications - on any kind of deployment platform. A key element of Spring is infrastructural support at the application level: Spring focuses on the "plumbing" of enterprise applications so that teams can focus on application-level business logic, without unnecessary ties to specific deployment environments.
The framework also serves as the foundation for Spring Integration, Spring Batch and the rest of the Spring family of projects. Browse the repositories under the SpringSource organization on GitHub for a full list.
.NET and Python variants are available as well.
Downloading artifacts
Instructions on downloading Spring artifacts via Maven and other build systems are available via the project wiki.
Documentation
See the current Javadoc and Reference docs.
Getting support
Check out the Spring forums and the Spring tag on StackOverflow. Commercial support is available too.
Issue Tracking
Spring's JIRA issue tracker can be found here. Think you've found a bug? Please consider submitting a reproduction project via the spring-framework-issues repository. The readme provides simple step-by-step instructions.
Building from source
The Spring Framework uses a Gradle-based build system. In the instructions
below, ./gradlew is invoked from the root of the source tree and
serves as a cross-platform, self-contained bootstrap mechanism for the build. The only
prerequisites are git and JDK 1.6+.
check out sources
git clone git://github.com/SpringSource/spring-framework.git
compile and test, build all jars, distribution zips and docs
./gradlew build
install all spring-* jars into your local Maven cache
./gradlew install
import sources into your IDE
Run ./import-into-eclipse.sh or read import-into-idea.md as appropriate.
... and discover more commands with ./gradlew tasks. See also the
Gradle build and release FAQ.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome; see the contributor guidelines.
Staying in touch
Follow @springframework and its team members on Twitter. In-depth articles can be found at the SpringSource team blog, and releases are announced via our news feed.
License
The Spring Framework is released under version 2.0 of the Apache License.