Issue: SPR-16743

(cherry picked from commit a200df6c)

(cherry picked from commit b4f83dbd)

ResponseEntityExceptionHandler rethrows unknown exception (for further processing in DispatcherServlet's HandlerExceptionResolver chain)

Issue: SPR-16743

(cherry picked from commit 7b894fe7)

Issue: SPR-16762

(cherry picked from commit 30363c84)

Issue: SPR-16783

(cherry picked from commit 9281f820)

Issue: SPR-16756

(cherry picked from commit c8b6233b)

Issue: SPR-16773

(cherry picked from commit 21fad8e2)

Issue: SPR-16752

Issue: SPR-16739

Issue: SPR-16734

Issue: SPR-16731

(cherry picked from commit d4a55a25)

Issue: SPR-16732

Issue: SPR-16714

Issue: SPR-16720

(cherry picked from commit 6184c4ec)

Issue: SPR-16717

(cherry picked from commit 8e1ececd)

Issue: SPR-16710

(cherry picked from commit 7ee61306)

Issue: SPR-16716

Issue: SPR-16717

Proper exception for controller method return types that do not work with MvcUriComponentsBuilder (e.g. final classes)

Issue: SPR-16710

Rather than create a new EvaluationContext instance per evaluation, we
now create a statically shared instance, without the root object in it,
and re-use it for all evalutations.

Issue: SPR-16695

With this change the code generation for method and property
references is modified to include branching logic in the
case of null safe dereferencing (?.). This is complicated
by the possible usage of primitives on the left hand side
of the dereference. To cope with this case primitives are
promoted to boxed types when this situation occurs enabling
null to be passed as a possible result.

Issue: SPR-16489

Issue: SPR-16678

(cherry picked from commit 9601d4bb)

In particular AnnotationTypeFilter's ignoring of standard Java interfaces, AnnotationUtils.clearCache() and a few extra common classes in ClassUtils.

Issue: SPR-16667
Issue: SPR-16675

(cherry picked from commit 6393e5ce)