I'm happy to announce the immediate availability of an integration library
that allows you to use the recently published EA3 release of JavaServer
Faces with a recent Struts build (nightly build 20030216 or later, or
the upcoming 1.1-rc2 or finalrelease). Nightly builds of this package are
available at:
http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-struts/nightly/struts-faces/
The sources for this package are in the "contrib/struts-faces"
subdirectory of the "jakarta-struts" CVS repository.
You should take note of the following important points:
* The design goal of this library was to allow Struts application
developers to migrate the view tier of their applications from the
existing Struts tags, to pages that use corresponding JavaServer Faces
component tags, with no changes to the corresponding business logic.
This goal has been substantially achieved for simple applications
so far; additional work will be necessary for more advanced apps.
As a proof of concept, the JavaServer Faces based version of the
canonical "struts-example" web application is included in the
distribution, so that you can see for yourself how little had to be
changed.
* The integration library has been tested under Tomcat 4.1.18 and
the Java Web Services Developer Pack (version 1.0_01), although in
principle it should run on any Servlet 2.3/JSP 1.2 container.
(It will not run on Servlet 2.2/JSP 1.1 containers).
* There is a known issue when trying to run JavaServer Faces EA3
under the recently released Java Web Services Developer Pack
(version 1.1). Watch the JavaServer Faces web page (at the URL
listed above) for up-to-date information on workarounds.
* The JavaServer Faces distribution is an EA release, not suitable for
use in production environments. In addition, the license terms
under which it can be downloaded prohibit redistribution. Therefore,
you will need to download your own copy of JavaServer Faces EA3 and
integrate it with the example application before it can be deployed.
* The integration library should also be considered to be of alpha
quality, not suitable for production use. There are a set of known
issues and limitations at the bottom of the README.txt file. Please
file bugs against this package in the usual Bugzilla location:
http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/
* For generic questions about JavaServer Faces (i.e. not related to this
integration library), your best resource is the JavaServer Faces forum
(free registration required) at:
http://forum.java.sun.com/forum.jsp?forum=427
See the README.txt file in the top-level subdirectory for more information
about installing and using this release.
Craig McClanahan
