Grails 0.5 is out, and it’s busting at the seams with improvements! This release marks a huge milestone in the march towards Grails 1.0, as it brings with it a whole host of features that truly take Grails to the next level. The real heavy hitters include a DSL for custom URL mappings, command objects, and GORM’s continued quest to free the world from the evils of painful Object Relational Mapping. You’ll also find this release sporting the new Groovy 1.1 beta distro, an improved developer experience (thanks to major improvements in hot reloading of key artifacts), an almost 50% increase in performance, and resolutions for over 200 JIRA issues. Be sure to check out the release notes for details on (and examples of) these and many other features of this slam-packed release.