It has been a long road, lasting over three years, but at last I can recommend Groovy as a stable, production proven and well documented programming language for the Java platform. (not to mention a very helpful and large user community)

This release coincides with the launch of the Manning book Groovy in Action, which gives an in depth reference to Groovy 1.0

[Full Disclosure: I'm a core committer for Groovy and I was a technical reviewer for this book]

Groovy 1.0 Highlights:

• A formal syntax based closely on Java 1.5, with added Groovy bits.
• Groovy can easily run source from the command line, ant, embedded in code
      (simply place groovy-all-1.0.jar in your classpath)
• Close ties with Spring, Lucene and other real world Java products.
• Fantastic for reducing the verbosity of common tasks in Java

quick start: example installation to /usr/local

$ cd /usr/local
$ wget http://dist.codehaus.org/groovy/distributions/groovy-1.0.tar.gz
$ tar xvfz groovy-1.0.tar.gz
$ export GROOVY_HOME=/usr/local/groovy-1.0
$ export PATH=${GROOVY_HOME}/bin:$PATH
$ groovy -e "println 'hello world'"

To coincide with this release, I have also released version 0.0.2 of the JVM command line interpreter Grash.

I'll be giving a Talk about the Groovy Compiler on 25 Jan 2007 in London, please come along to that, and the pub afterwards, to discuss all things Groovy.

I will be at the Groovy Developers Conference in Paris (starts 29 Jan 2007) to discuss the future direction of Groovy, in particular enhanced IDE support.

In May 2007 there will be a three day Groovy and Grails conference at the Barbican, which will be perfect for anyone interested in this language to meet the core developers, and discover the cutting edge progress in Groovy.

But most of all, Groovy 1.0 would not be where it is today without the work of the open source community. I'd like to thank each person for their work in making Groovy a fantastic language:
Committers:
Guillaume Laforge (glaforge), Jochen Theodorou (blackdrag), Jeremy Rayner (jez), John Wilson (tug), Russel Winder (russel), James Strachan (jstrachan), Dierk Koenig (dierk), Christian Stein (cstein), Paul King (paulk), Joe Walnes (joe), Chris Stevenson (skizz), Jamie McCrindle (jamiemc), Matt Foemmel (mattf), Sam Pullara (spullara), Kasper Nielsen (kasper), Travis Kay (travis), Zohar Melamed (zohar), Bob McWhirter (bob), Chris Poirier (cpoirier), Christiaan ten Klooster (ckl), Steve Goetze (goetze), Bing Ran (bran), John Stump (jstump), Pilho Kim (phk), Mark Chu-Carroll (markcc), Alan Green (alang), Edward Povazan (emp), Franck Rasolo (fraz), John Rose (jrose), Graeme Rocher (graeme), Guillaume Alleon (galleon), Antti Karanta (akaranta), Dave Kerber (davekerber), Hein Meling (hmeling), Joachim Baumann (jbaumann), James E. Ervin (jervin), Scott Hickey (jshickey), Martin C. Martin (mcspanky), Marc Guillemot (mguillem), Aslak Hellesoy (rinkrank), Steven Devijver (sdevijver), Scott Stirling (sstirling), Yuri Schimke (yuri)
Contributors:
Joern Eyrich, Robert Kuzelj, Rod Cope, James Birchfield, Robert Fuller, Sergey Udovenko Hallvard Traetteberg, Peter Reilly, Brian McCallister Richard Monson-Haefel, Brian Larson, Artur Biesiadowski Ivan Z. Ganza, Arjun Nayyar, Mark Turansky, Jean-Louis Berliet, Graham Miller, Marc Palmer, Tugdual Grall, and many many many other contributors and organisations.

Thankyou All (and apologies if I missed anyone, so many people...) :-)