ASF Bug 57802 – Compatibility with ICEfaces 1.8 over JSF 1.1 apps Correct the default implementation of convertToType() provided by javax.el.ELResolver.

some pages using boolean or String resulting EL expression which used to function well under Tomcat 7 and earlier versions of Tomcat 8.

The source of this is the use of ELContext in some methods of org.apache.el.lang.ELSupport. ELContext is used starting from JSF 1.2(unles I'm wrong, then feel free to notice it to me). Trying to use it with JSF 1.1 app results sometimes in null references giving NPE on the specified screens. To correct it, i commented the relevant blocks of code. What I might suggest is, for ascending compatibility, to use the following procedure:
-try to look for the value in ELContext
-if the result is null, then fallback to the older versions(e.g. Tomcat 7) ways of resolving EL values

https://bz.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=57802
http://svn.apache.org/r1677810