Struts versions 1.x, 2, shale

[Jesus Angeles]

While I still find big companies using 1.x, it may not be a surprise as version 2 is relatively (?) new, and a bigger-than-upgrade conversion is needed to migrate to 2.

One concern I have is on shale. Is it the next version of struts after 2.0? If so, is 2.0 then railroaded and would be like (~)unnecessary, and will die quietly? Or Struts 2.0 and onwards will live, and Shale will have its own following?

[Merrill Higginson]

I think the real question is whether JavaServer Faces (JSF) will become the de facto standard for web frameworks and leave all other frameworks in the dust. Since Shale is just an add-on to JSF, I don't see it as being all that significant.

When Struts was born, it was by far the best of only a few frameworks available, and so was widely adopted. Today there are many web frameworks worthy of attention, and many, including Struts 2, seem to have significant followings. When Sun adopted JSF as part of the Java EE specification, they clearly hoped that it would become THE framework. As I see it, though, that hasn't happened, nor is it likely to happen any time soon.