Upgrading our framework from JSF 1.1 to JSF 1.2

It's been a while since the last post. I'm currently working on upgrading our in-house JSF framework to support JSF specification 1.2

The basic plan was to update the project and freeze the old branch based on JSF 1.1

In course of adaptation the difference between JSF 1.1 and 1.2 turned out to be not as immense as we expected it to be. So the solution is as simple as that.

• On initialization we check what JSF version is used in a project
• According to the currently used JSF version specific classes are loaded via reflection
• As a result our JSF Framework supports both 1.1 and 1.2, so there is no need to make adaptations to applications using it (and everybody is happy)
  

The major differences between 1.1 and 1.2 that we had to confront with:

• JSF 1.2 is based on JSP 2.0 whereas JSF 1.1 uses JSP 1.2
• Migrating to JSF 1.2 means, one has to move the application to the newer Tomcat 6.0 (if e.g. currently using Tomcat 5.5)
• JSF 1.2 uses EL Resolver to resolve variables binding

Now we are planning an extended integration test to be sure the running applications will survive this upgrade. But I have a good feeling about it.