Seam 2.0.0 CR2 is now out. You can find it here.

This is the first release we've done under the new maven-ized build system. Not only does it help us track our dependencies better, but it has helped use to trim back the JAR bloat from CR1. We're still working on reducing the download size furthe, for those who don't want all the examples and all of their many dependencies. If you just need the latest JARs, remember that you can get them directly from the repository.

We have been extremely pleased with how thoroughly the Seam community has been looking at CR1. We've diligently attacked all the issues reported, and that's made this release very solid. If we've missed something, please let us know so we can fix it before the GA release.

Speaking of the GA release, when will it be? We expect it will be about a week. If you check JIRA, you'll see we are going to be working on the documentation over the next week. We are also taking to heart our need for more and better testing, and the entire Seam team will be taking a few days to crank out tests and improve our test suite. We realize everyone out there wants the GA release out quickly, (trust me, nobody wants that more than we do) but we think the few extra days of wait will be worth it.

Oh, and before I forget, I want to take a second to welcome our newest Seam committer, Dan Allen. Dan has been contributing quite a bit to Seam, so we're very happy to have him as a committer.

I am very happy to announce that we have released Seam 2.0.0 CR1. If you are impatient, you can get it here.

This release moves the Seam 2.0 ever closer to a final release, but to get there we are going to need help from the Seam community to test out the release. If you haven't already done so, please give Seam 2.0 a spin with your Seam applications. The release looks very solid, but if you run into any issues, you can bring them up in the Seam forums or open issues in JIRA .

Here's a rundown of the new features in Seam 2.0:

• Seam WS allows Seam components to function as Web Service endpoints
• Seam components may now be writted in Groovy
• The Seam core is now independent of JSF
• Experimental support for the Google Web Toolkit
• Integration of Hibernate Search
• Introduction of JBoss EL, an extension to the Unified EL of Java EE 5
• Charting integration in PDF and HTML, using JFreeChart
• Major enhancements to Seam Asynchronicity, including Quartz integration
• Major enhancements to jBPM integration
• Completely reorganized packaging of built-in components
• Migration to JSF 1.2
• Simplified configuration
• Support for pageflow composition
• Enhancements to the integration testing framework
• New transaction abstraction layer with support for non-JTA environments
• Enhanced JavaDoc
• Two new example applications
• Migration to the new Embedded JBoss
• Seam JSF controls reimplemented using Ajax4JSF CDK
• Many, many bugfixes