I'm pleased to say we have released Seam 2.0.2.GA.

This release focuses on stability, component updates and documentation improvements. We've fixed over 150 bugs since Seam 2 was released back in November, and, with over 70 000 downloads since then, Seam 2 has had pretty good exposure.

Thanks to the hard work of the JBoss.org team we've also improved the look and feel of the reference documentation. Technical content has also been added with chapters on getting started with JBoss Tools, a tutorial on internationalising your app, and updated information on using Seam with different application containers.

[Download] [Documentation] [Forums] [JIRA]

While everyone else is having fun at JavaOne we uploaded the candidate release of JBoss Tools 2.1.0 at sourceforge and via the development update site.

This release is mainly 100+ bugfixes/enhancements based on QA and feedback from the last release.

A few new features did make it into 2.1.x and you can see those at new and noteworthy.

To upgrade safely to this release please read the following.

Existing Seam projects

Existing Seam projects will work fine in this new release, except EAR projects with an application.xml should be updated to have something like the following modules:

<module>
 <web>
  <web-uri>myprj.war</web-uri>
  <context-root>/myprj</context-root>
 </web>
</module>

<module>
 <ejb>myprj-ejb.jar</ejb>
</module>

<module>
 <ejb>jboss-seam.jar</ejb>
</module>

..and nothing else. The <java> elements we generated previously are unnecessary and breaks WTP 2.0.2. The details about why that is are in the following.

Less rigid WTP 2.0.2

We are now targeting WTP 2.0.2+Patches to get some of its important bugfixes.

Unfortunately WTP 2.0.2 introduced a bad regression bug concerning deployment and another bug which makes WTP 2.0.2 very rigid about deploying jar's listed in application.xml via <java> or <ejb> tags unless they have xml descriptors (which is not required in JEE 5).

This affects Seam 1.2 projects and any other projects using binary jars with EJB's in them and projects that uses <java> or <ejb> in application.xml for jars without descriptors which is the case for projects created with previous version of JBoss Tools

To get around these various bugs/features of WTP 2.0.2 we had to do two things:

1. application.xml in new Seam projects no longer lists jar's in <java> elements to work with WTP 2.0.2. Besides being more correct and standard compliant it also makes the application.xml much smaller so in overall this is a Good thing. Unfortunately existing JBoss Seam projects that uses <java> in application.xml can run into files not being deployed thus we added a EAR validator that will put warnings/errors on offending elements we know can cause problems and with instructions on how to fix it.
2. We provide a cumulative feature patch to WTP 2.0.2 which removes the rigidness in WTP with respect to JEE jars without descriptors. It is a hack, but it at least allows JEE 5 compliant jars to work instead of causing a exception stacktraces and random behavior in Eclipse.

We had hoped this rigidness could be removed in an update to WTP 2.x, but that does not seem to happen within a decent time frame so we decided to release the patch on our own. Note: WTP 2.0.2+WTP provided patches will work for most users, but we do recommend running with our patch to avoid publishing issues.

Feedback

We plan on going GA within the next few weeks so we encourage you to provide feedback on our forum and jira in case you find something bad or good ;).

p.s. This version of JBoss Tools (sans the experimental parts) will be available in a JBoss Developer Studio 1.1.0.CR1 for JBDS customers soon.

Seam 2.0.2.CR2 is now out. This release fixes almost all the known issues with CR1 release, with most of the changes related to minor problems with the examples and the documentation. The laundry list for the GA release is quite small, so I expect we'll have it out shortly. However, the exact timing depends on what kind of feedback we get from the Seam community. If you want to help us get it out faster, give 2.0.2.CR2 a test run and report back if you encounter anything out of the ordinary.

[Download] [Documentation] [Forums] [JIRA]

Based on the feedback from the community (RichFaces Forum) and the RedHat/JBoss support team, we can emphasize four possible major directions:

1. Developing new components to continuously extend the component set
2. Simplifying the development with JSF and RichFaces
3. Keeping RichFaces constantly stable
4. Making RichFaces modern and cool

What are your personal preferences. Vote for one of the options at:

http://jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=134778

Gavin and I are talking at JavaOne about the various standardization efforts JBoss is leading at the moment around Seam and Hibernate Validator:

• Web Beans and the simplification of web application developments in Java EE 6 (Gavin King - TS-5286 - Introduction to Web Beans – Wednesday, May 7 10:50-11:50am)
• Bean Validation: the Hibernate Validator cousin and how it integrates into the Java development landscape (Emmanuel Bernard - TS-5616 – JSR 303: From a World of Constraints to Constrain the World - Wednesday, May 7 4:10-5:10pm)

Burr and Max (yet another one) Katz will be talking about JBoss Developer Studio and how tools help you speed up your Java EE developments nowadays (Burr Sutter and Max Katz (Exadel) – TS-7479 – Open Source Development Tools for the Java™ Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE Platform), Web 2.0, and SOA – Thursday, May 8 4:10-5:10pm and Friday, May 9, 2:50-3:50pm).

And, of course, we will be at the JBoss Speakeasy party: open food, open bar, open talks.Registration is required.

See you there!