I have a copy of the last Tomcat 5.5 version (5.5.35) defined in my servers list. This confuses NetBeans 7.4.

A. New project
1. Create a new web project using Maven
2. Arrive at the settings panel of the wizard
3. NetBeans will choose Apache Tomcat 5.5.35 since it's listed first
4. There will be no Java EE version

B. Existing project with no defined server
1. Choose run for an existing Java EE project
2. Get prompted for a server (remember for IDE session, remember permanently)
3. Apache Tomcat 5.5.35 is listed, even for Java EE 5 and Java EE 6 projects

NetBeans will still allow me to add a Tomcat 5.5.x server, even though NetBeans does not recognize that the server only supports up to version 2.4 of the servlet specification.

Since Tomcat 5.5 was retired almost a year ago, I don't think that adding support for it is reasonable (or even desired). However, I think one of two courses of action are reasonable.

1. Disallow Tomcat 5.5.x servers from being added

In my case, this occurred when I migrated my settings from 7.3.1 to the 7.4 nightly build. I'm not sure how you could prevent specific versions of the Tomcat server from being added. Also, since you don't officially support Tomcat 6, you may end up blocking that (which is unfortunate since it's still a viable server).

2. Modify release notes and migration notes

I didn't see any mention of this in the release notes, but it looks like support for servlet specification 2.4 has been dropped. At least this no longer appears in the drop down menu with creating a new project.

If that's the case, this should be mentioned in the release notes at least. Unfortunately people still have legacy projects to support that are not yet slated for a rewrite (still have applets as well - sigh).