Backport Scope for v3.28.0

[scordio]

We recently talked about how version 4 still needs a bit more work and probably won't be ready until at least the first half of 2026.

As Mr. Bull would say:

Releasing a new major version is a rare opportunity for us: we want to take our time to carefully refine AssertJ's internals, tackle accumulated technical debt, and enhance the overall user experience with the fluent API. We're not aiming for another major release within just a year, and we definitely don't want to rush things just to release something.

On the other hand, we understand that waiting another half a year can be frustrating for the AssertJ users.

For this reason, although we previously announced that version 3 would go into maintenance mode, we plan to release 3.28.0 around the end of 2025.

In this release, we can backport features and fixes that are already included in 4.0.0-M1 and 4.0.0-M2. We can also consider open issues, but we'll carefully asses the necessary effort to make sure it fits comfortably within our timeframe.

If you'd like to see something specific in 3.28.0, please let us know!

The scope will be frozen on December 14th.

[lobaorn-bitso]

I would like that the assertj-protobuf module would be available in a 3.28.0 release, given that Spring gRPC will reach 1.0.0 with Boot 4, and I am not sure if Boot will upgrade assertj from 3.28.0 during 4.X lifecycle, so would like to be sure to have it in 3.28.0 just to be safe :)

[scordio]

Thanks for the feedback, @lobaorn-bitso! I added that to 3.28 for evaluation.