JRuby 0.8.3 has been released. This version fixes a huge number of problems and boasts the following notables:

- irb (jirb) works
- included Java classes are dramatically faster to load and use. A two minute Swing example now loads in approximately 5 seconds.
- binding works
- every constant scoping issue we knew of has been fixed
- interpreter redesign work improved stack depth and brings us closer to supporting continuations
- serious concurrency error when Ruby instances are passed back out to Java has fixed. This was a must for servlet-based solutions.
- adornment of Java classes with Ruby methods via ‘extend_proxy’ method

Thanks to all people on the project and mailing lists for making JRuby a much better piece of software. Special props out to Charles Nutter for working so hard this development
cycle.

The next release is going to be targetted for the beginning of May. We want one more release out before JavaOne. We are getting close to having RubyGems and Ruby on Rails working.