I got interested in looking at JSF 2.0 as a potential technology to use. Does anybody know when this version is scheduled to come out and how active is the project in general?
JSF 2.0 is included in JEE 6, and Glassfish v3 currently supports it. It'll also run in WebSphere 7, with some effort.
JSF 2.0 was already final several months ago (19 october 2009) and it's indeed included in the Java EE 6 which was made final about one month ago (10 december 2009).
Although it's been released along with Servlet 3.0 API in Java EE 6, JSF 2.0 is backwards compatible with Servlet 2.5. So you can either download it separately and run on any Servlet 2.5 capable webcontainer like Tomcat 6.0, or just download a full fledged Java EE 6 implementation including it like Glassfish v3.
Does anybody know when this version is scheduled to come out
JSF 2.0 is part of Java EE 6 (i.e. any Java EE 6 container supports it) and has been elaborated under JSR-314 (which is final since 01 Jul, 2009) but, as mentioned on the JCP web page:
Sun will deliver a Reference Implementation (RI) and Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). The RI will be made available standalone and as part of the Java EE 6 platform.
The RI is Mojarra and is already available. As written in Mojarra 2.0.0 is available! (Oct 19, 2009):
There are several ways to obtain the release.
- GlassFish V3 promoted build 69 (out later this week)
- Download directly from https://javaserverfaces.dev.java.net
- Download using Maven2 using information provided here
You actually don't need a full Java EE 6 server. For example, check out the post JSF 2.0 and Tomcat or Integrating JSF 2.0 and Weld with Tomcat6. But I'd simply go for GlassFish v3 (or JBoss 5.2+ which also supports JSF 2.0 + CDI).
how active is the project in general?
What project? The RI? What do you mean exactly? Well, Mojarra is used in GlassFish so I consider it as a serious project, with dedicated man power. However, I don't expect extreme activity now that the spec is final, only maintenance and bugfix releases (see the project News)