Developing JSF 2 Applications on Google App Engine 1.6.1

I have taken advantage of some free time I had while on vacation to update the "Configuring JavaServer Faces 2.0 to run on the Google App Engine Using Eclipse" using the 1.6.1 release of the App Engine platform.

In the course of updating this article, my testing shows that it is no longer necessary to set the com.sun.faces.enableThreading context parameter equal to a value of false. As described in the JSF 2.0 release notes, this context parameter impacts resource handling for the JSF framework.

When enabled, the runtime initialization and default ResourceHandle implementation will use threads to perform their functions. Set this value to false if threads aren't desired (as in the case of running within the Google Application Engine).

Note that when this option is disabled, the ResourceHandler will not pick up new versions of resources when ProjectStage is development.

In addition, it appears that one may now freely use the javax.faces.PROJECT_STAGE context parameter with a value of "Development" without issue. Ryan Lubke provides an excellent description of the purpose of this context parameter in his "JSF 2.0 New Feature Preview Series (Part 1): ProjectStage" blog entry.

The "JavaServer Faces 2.0 and Google App Engine Compatibility Issues" article has been updated accordingly.