Ok so I set my flag in the eclipse preferences VM section -Dtapestry.production-mode=false
and I get dev mode as expected ______ __ ____ /_ __/__ ____ ___ ___ / /_______ __ / __/ / / / _ `/ _ \/ -_|_-</ __/ __/ // / /__ \ /_/ \_,_/ .__/\__/___/\__/_/ \_, / /____/ /_/ /___/ 5.3.1 (development mode) 2012-11-09 10:42:56.540:INFO::Started SelectChannelConnector@0.0.0.0:8080 And when I breakpoint on one of my eventlink handlers... my homePage variable is actually allocated properly... it is no longer null. I am still trying to conceptually bang what you said into my head... and still trying to understasnd what tapestry is doing or trying to do at this level during the debugger... or how it is making my life easier. I understand in PROD mode it is trying to streamline things ?... an doesn't expect you to be in the debugger? And there is some kind of threadlocal storage being exercised? And a swapping in of state ? Well I am still looking at these variables... back to my suspected finding of a bug... I dont understand why then if I took out the duplicate delegate block reference the corruption in the app stopped. Could that be a bug ? delegating to an already delegated block? thanks again