Since Griffon 0.9.1 default imports per artifacts are supported. All Groovy based artifacts will resolve classes from the griffon.core and griffon.util packages automatically, there is no longer a need to define imports on those classes unless you require an static import or define an alias. An example of this feature would be as follows.

class MyController {
    void mvcGroupInit(Map args) {
        println Metadata.current.'app.name'
    }
}

The Metadata class is defined in package griffon.util. There are additional imports per artifact type, here's the list of default definitions

The list of imports per artifacts can be tweaked or changed completely at will. You only need to specify a file named META-INF/griffon-default-imports.properties with the following format

<artifact_type> = <comma_separated_package_list>

These are the contents of the default file

views = javax.swing., javax.swing.event., javax.swing.table., javax.swing.text., javax.swing.tree., java.awt., java.awt.event.
models = groovy.beans., java.beans.

Imports are cumulative, this means you a package can't be removed from the default list provided by Griffon.