Groovy 5 support

[boris-petrov]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

Groovy 5 is out! It would be great if there is support in Spock for it.

Describe the solution you'd like

Support for Groovy 5.

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional context

No response

[Vampire]

Related Discussion Thread: #2160

[kdebski85]

I am getting the following error with Spock 2.3 and Groovy 5.0.0 when compiling tests with Gradle 9.0.0:

Could not instantiate global transform class org.spockframework.compiler.SpockTransform specified at jar:file:/Users/krzysztofdebski/.gradle/caches/modules-2/files-2.1/org.spockframework/spock-core/2.3-groovy-4.0/8861b2590bb8e4709b052fb4ed6da3de98e734d9/spock-core-2.3-groovy-4.0.jar!/META-INF/services/org.codehaus.groovy.transform.ASTTransformation  because of exception org.spockframework.util.IncompatibleGroovyVersionException: The Spock compiler plugin cannot execute because Spock 2.3.0-groovy-4.0 is not compatible with Groovy 5.0.0. For more information (including enforce mode), see https://docs.spockframework.org (section 'Known Issues').
Spock artifact: file:/Users/krzysztofdebski/.gradle/caches/modules-2/files-2.1/org.spockframework/spock-core/2.3-groovy-4.0/8861b2590bb8e4709b052fb4ed6da3de98e734d9/spock-core-2.3-groovy-4.0.jar
Groovy artifact: file:/Users/krzysztofdebski/.gradle/caches/modules-2/files-2.1/org.apache.groovy/groovy/5.0.0/b4e9817ec0f53d48670a414f9090492c9c459643/groovy-5.0.0.jar

[Vampire]

@kdebski85 of course you get it, did you read the message?
It tells you that you try to use 2.3-groovy-4.0 with Groovy 5.0 which is not supported.
Spock 2.3 does not have Groovy 5.0 compatibility.
You can try to disable this check so that you can use the 4.0 variant with Groovy 5.0, but it will most likely break when certain Spock features are used like exception conditions.
This issue is about providing Groovy 5 support.

[moonfruit]

How to disable the check? @Vampire

[Vampire]

Set the spock.iKnowWhatImDoing.disableGroovyVersionCheck system property or use a SNAPSHOT version: https://spockframework.org/spock/docs/2.3/all_in_one.html#_groovy_version_compatibility

But remember that this is unsupported.

[kdebski85]

I tried implementing it, but I found some blocking issues.

In SpockBasePlugin, when COMPILER_VERSION = JavaLanguageVersion.of(8) it does not work because Groovy 5 requires Java 11.

With COMPILER_VERSION = JavaLanguageVersion.of(11) I get the following error:

/spock-core/src/main/java/spock/lang/Specification.java:49: error: as of release 9, '_' is a keyword, and may not be used as an identifier
  public static final Object _ = Wildcard.INSTANCE;

I am not sure how to continue. I cannot remove or rename _.

Additionally, I think support for Groovy 2 and Java 8 should be dropped. Java 8 cannot be used with Groovy 5. Groovy 2 cannot be used with Java 11+.

[Vampire]

As I said in the related discussions thread, you anyway also need to set release = 8 so that the compilation happens against the Java 8 API and produces Java 8 compatible class files, including the allowance to use _ as variable name. ;-)

[OlgaMaciaszek]

Is there a planned date for a GA with Groovy 5 compatibility?