⭐ New Features

• Upgrade to Jackson 3 #2357
• Remove all deprecations declared until 2.0 #2335
• Remove deprecated VndErrors support #2334

💡 Improvements

• Improve logical comparability of Link instances #2336
• Allow finding links in embedded documents for HalLinkDiscoverer #2385
• AOT preparations need to consider Jackson 3 packages #2382
• Avoid reflection in IanaLinkRelations #2381
• Move to jSpecify for nullability checks #2332
• Disable single-template HAL FORMS defaulting #2331

🪲 Bugs

• Add explicit proxying metadata for DummyInvocationUtils #2384
• HalConfiguration changed order of (default) media types #2333
• Code in section 6.1.1 of the reference guide does not compile #2330

🔨 Dependency Upgrades

• Upgrade to Spring Framework 7.0 #2397, #2386, #2375, #2364, #2355, #2329, #2314, #2302, #2279
• Upgrade to Jackson 3 #2393, #2387, #2368, #2365, #2354, #2353, #2322
• Upgrade to Spring Plugin 4 #2398, #2379, #2303
• Upgrade to Reactor 2025.0.0 #2396, #2374, #2363, #2352, #2324
• Upgrade to JUnit 6 #2394, #2369, #2350, #2292, #2316
• Upgrade to AssertJ 3.27.6 #2373, #2349
• Upgrade to Kotlin 2.2.21 #2389, #2361, #2356, #2343, #2328, #2317
• Upgrade Kotlin Koroutines to 1.10.2 #2315
• Upgrade to Mockk 1.14.6 #2372, #2351, #2323, #2295
• Upgrade to Logback 1.5.21 #2395, #2388, #2370, #2294
• Upgrade to Lombok 1.18.42 #2371, #2362,

❤️ Contributors

Thank you to all the contributors who worked on this release:

@freeftr and @greg-at-moderne