2ca6d0b2be
Prior to this change, license.txt and notice.txt files were duplicated across every subproject in their respective src/main/resources/META-INF directories. This commit centralizes these files under the root project at src/dist, along with the changelog and readme files. The definition of the 'jar' task has been been extended to include the license and notice files in module jars as they are created. The directory is named src/dist because these files are all related to distribution - the readme is different than the one you see at the root of the source tree - the intended audience is for users who download the spring-framework distribution zip. A task to create that distribution zip will be added in subsequent commits.
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
Instructions on building Spring from source are available via the project wiki.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome; you'll be asked to sign our contributor license agreement (CLA). Trivial changes like typo fixes are especially appreciated (just fork and edit!). For larger changes, please search through JIRA for similiar issues, creating a new one if necessary, and discuss your ideas with the Spring team.
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.