Please consider preserving support for batch XML namespace

In Spring Batch 6.0 the batch XML namespace has been deprecated (#4843) and planned for removal in 7.0.

I have always thought both XML and Java configuration options have their merits and it's mostly a matter of style and taste.

In my situation, we have about 250 Spring Batch jobs that are configured using the batch XML namespace. It would be painful having to migrate all these to the Java configuration style when we want to upgrade to 7.0. I think there could be a considerable amount of users in similar situation?

In my opinion, conceptually the configuration structure of jobs and steps with reader/processor/writer seems pretty well suited for the XML configuration style. It can sometimes be more concise and easier to comprehend (judging by comparing the XML and Java Config tab on the reference documentation).

So hereby my request to the maintainers to hopefully reconsider this decision 🙏

If you absolutely wish to remove it from core Spring Batch, maybe it could be an option to extract it to https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-batch-extensions?

No source file, test, or entry point is named. Start by reading the deprecation discussion in #4843 and comparing the XML and Java Config examples in the reference documentation; done means a maintainer decision on preserving the namespace in core or extracting it to spring-batch-extensions.