GlassFish v2.1.1 is out (Sun Distro, Community Distro). GFv2.1.1 is the foundation for SailFin v2 and includes refinements on Replication and Failure detection plus many (>200) bug fixes and other improvements. See Shreedhar' s Overview, Kevin's post, the Wiki page and PR @Oracle OpenWorld. GFv2.1.1 also includes OpenMQ 4.4, Grizzly 1.0.30 (changes), Jersey 1.0.3 (changes), Shoal 1.1 (changes) and JSF 1.2_13. The bulk of the changes are from the GF repository (changes).

The commercial offering is via the GlassFish Portfolio. Note that GFv2.1.1 is also a patch for earlier releases (GFv2.1, itself a patch for GFv2U2) but the patch has not yet published at SunSolve. I'll post an entry at GlassFishForBusiness when it becomes available.

Mojarra 2.0, the production-quality, reference implementation for JSF 2.0 is out! Yet another step closer to v3 final. This will of course be part of GlassFish v3 later this year (with an integration planned as early as this week) but Maven and standalone are two other options to grab the bits. In his blog, Ryan lists a set of very good resources (mainly blog posts) on JSF 2.0. Earlier this year, Ryan authored a series of blogposts which were also very detailed and informative. He covers tools support (yes, it's coming very soon as Cay discusses for NetBeans in his latest blog post) and recognizes the numerous contributors to this major release.

Note also that while JSF 2.0 is set to be part of Java EE 6, it does not require a servlet 3.0 container. In the case of GlassFish v3.0, web.xml is optional and there is no longer the need to declare the Faces servlet (see Cay's entry on that as well).

Mojarra as an implementation of JSF 2.0 is the first one out but it is also set to be part of a number of coopetitor's. Finally, now is probably a good time to skim throught The Aquarium posts tagged with the jsf2 and mojarra keywords.

Added The latest release is Mojarra 2.0.1, see Jim's post.

There is a new beta for Mojarra 2.0, the RI of JSF 2.0 (relnotes, news, downloads). Mojarra 2.0 is bundled in GlassFish v3 and the new release of Mojarra is included in recent Promoted Builds; an alternative is to use the Update Center and only update JSF.

The Update Crenter is accessed through an update tool; either the one bundled in the GlassFish console or the unbundled one. To do that, first ensure that you have http://pkg.glassfish.org/v3/dev as your preferred repository and then check on available updates. You will get a long list; you can then unselect all the components (using (Command-Modifier)-U on my mac) and then select JSF only. Then you just need to install the new packages.

Thanks to Jim for the tip. Ah!, also note that Mojarra can also be used in other containers; install and configure it manually.

The JSF 2.0 team last month released an implementation of the new JSF 2.0 PRD (see JCP vote) and an updated JSF 1.2.11. The releases are available at the GFv3 Update Center (see, e.g., Mac) and can be installed using the stand-alone UpdateTool or the Admin Console. Let us know if you encounter any problems.

This implementation has all PRD features including the Declarative Events described by Jason, but the EG is still working on additional features like state management. A few others, like bookmarkable URLs, are still being discussed and may or not make it.

Most migrations to GlassFish are straight-forward, a testimony to the value of the JavaEE specification (and to the extra care to the user in the GF community!). The only area that sometimes requires non-trivial changes are dependencies on implementation details in MyFaces.

The GlassFish JSF implementation (Mojarra) is Used in Many Containers and the new JSF 2.0 spec should improve portability but GF supports a useMyFaces Property for this use case. Arun just published a note showing how to use the property when Using Apache Tomahawk but I'm extracting here the configuration table for ease of reference:

• On GlassFish v2 - Set "useMyFaces" in "sun-web.xml" • On GlassFish v3 Prelude - Not supported • On GlassFish v3 Trunk - Set "useMyFaces" OR "useBundledJsf" in "sun-web.xml".

Note that you also need to disable Facelets 2.0 in "web.xml" if you have Facelets 1.1.x dependencies.

The Public Review draft of JSF 2.0 is available for download. Earlier Roberto reported on the plan for all the Java EE 6 specs to be in PR by mid-December; so far so good, but more to come. Roberto is scheduled to present on Java EE 6 on Dec 18th (together with Rajiv on Servlet 3.0). Also see posts tagged JSF and JCP.

Added - Another Spec released in PRD that same day was the Java EE Connection Architecture 1.6.

Facelets are (almost) here! The Facelets View Definition Framework was designed to complement the JSF technology and will be added to the JSF 2.0 specification - the EDR (Expert Draft Release) actually has a placeholder for them in Chapter 10 (see JSR 314 EDR) and you can check out an earlier definition of Facelets here. Ryan just pushed the facelets code into the Mojarra (the JSF RI, part of GlassFish) repository - see Commit message (MarkMail Archive, Java.Net Msg) - thanks to Ed for the tip - and we should hear more from that front soon.

Facelets are already supported in NetBeans (Intro to Facelets Tutorial) and hopefully also in Eclipse (in the meantime check out this Note). A couple of other useful pointers are Matthias posts and this DeveloperWorks Article. Also see entries tagged as JSF

Added - Ryan tells me that the plan is to incorporate ideas from both Facelets and JSF Templating into JSF 2.0. I'll highlight the details as they become public.

One more note from Ryan on his JSF 2.0 Preview series. This one covers View Scope, Component Implicit EL Object and FacesContext Attributes Map. Collecting them all chronologically for ease of references: • Part 1 - Packaging / Project Staging • Part 2.1 - Resources • Part 2.2 - Resource APIs • Part 2.3 - Resources and EL • Part 3 - Publish/Subscribe Event System • Part 4 - Resource Re-location • Part 5 - EDR1 Potpourri (just added)

Ryan's note completes the new features in EDR1. To install it you can follow the instructions in the Release Notes.

The image shown with this entry is a drawing of La Mojarra Stela 1 from research lead by Terrence Kaufman - see the Larger Image.

Ryan has written two more notes on his JSF 2.0 Preview series. Collecting them all chronologically for ease of references: • Part 1 - Packaging / Project Staging • Part 2.1 - Resources • Part 2.2 - Resource APIs • Part 2.3 - Resources and EL • Part 3 - Publish/Subscribe Event System (just added) • Part 4 - Resource Re-location (just added)

Ryan is also leading the Mojarra Implementation, the production-ready, Reference Implementation that will be used in GlassFish v3, and he also just announced the Early Access Implementation.

JSF's adoption seems to continue to be strong and to grow. I am beginning to think the adoption is bimodal, it depends very much on what market/geography one considers. For example, see Kito's JSF Jobs writeup.

Note: also see reviews/summaries of Ryan's posts by Ed and in earlier TA's spotlights: here and here.

JSF 2.0 is one of the key Java EE 6 components. As an API, JSF 2.0 (aka JSR 314) is in the Early Access Draft (EDR) phase. Jim Driscoll announces the availability of Mojarra EDR 1 which is the Mojarra (a GlassFish sub-project) implementation of that specification. This EDR release should soon be available on the GlassFish v2 update center and later on on the GlassFish v3 update center.

As a reminder, JSF 2.0 has the following objectives: make writing JSF components easier, integrated support for Ajax, reduced configuration, portlet 2.0 alignment, integration of facelets, support for Rest principles, and more. Ed has a nice summary of yet more features. As an implementation, Mojarra also has a number of interesting features beyond what the specification requires such as Groovy integration for a save/reload development paradigm.

Java EE 6 is scheduled for the first half of 2009. The final version of GlassFish v3 will implement Java EE 6.
More on this news at TSS.

The JSF 2.0 Expert Group is soliciting feedback on their Early Access Draft. The review started on June 2nd (yesterday) and will run until July 2nd. Draft specification is available ; additional details at the JSR 314 JCP Page. Ryan and the team are working on an EA of the implementation for people to try out. I believe we will try to make it available at both the UC 1 and the UC 2 repositories.

JSF can now enjoy the save+reload paradigm (no redeployment) when using Mojarra and Groovy. You may remember Mojarra as the new name for the JSF (reference) implementation integrated into GlassFish. Groovy on the other side probably doesn't need that much introduction.

In a recent blog, Ryan Lubke explains how a recent version of Mojarra can be configured to let you write pretty much any JSF artifact in groovy and thus benefit fully from dynamic reloading. If you add Facelets and NetBeans to the mix, the developer experience becomes very seamless. Ryan's instructions cover the use of the recently-released Groovy 1.5.5 version.

Read also Jason's blog on that topic.

The Apache MyFaces project has a number of subprojects. One of them is the MyFaces Implementation, an alternative to the GlassFish JSF RI (aka Mojarra). Buy MyFaces also has several component libraries and their Compatibility Matrix indicates that the latest versions of Trinidad and Tomahawk run with Mojarra. Ryan just validated this for the latest Trinidad. Check Ryan's Note and the Live Demos.

The JSF Matrix keeps a table of JSF component libraries (although the comments suggest it needs updating) and Ryan just published a short note pointing to it. Pretty much all the component libraries work with GlassFish (we cheat a bit, most of the AppServers are using Mojarra, our JSF implementation). Libraries explicitly mentioned by Ryan from those in the JSF Matrix include our own Woodstock, ICEfaces, Apache Trinidad, Apache Tomahawk, JBoss RichFaces and Blueprints. He also lists Mojarra Scales and Mannor'n Rock. We would like to make it easier for you to run any of these libraries in your GlassFish application; let us know if you discover problems and we will collaborate with the library owners to fix them.

• Metro - Training, Metro on Sun WebServer, Security • Adoption - In a word: Wow!, new GeoMap • Performance and HA - Apache as Load Balancer, Tuning • Tools - Podcast, NB6 is OUT! • Web.Next - Roller 4, Q&A on jMaki, JRuby and Metro • Community - Awards Program, Update Center contest, Mojarra • GFv3 - Wishlist for Docs