Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Yeah, one thing I noted in the article is that noserver is not the only way to do it, you can also munge the embedded Tomcat.

Even though noserver can be useful, it has two BIG drawbacks.

1. You aren't really solving the configuration problem, you are just moving it. Rather than having to muck with the embedded Tomcat stuff, you have to muck with an external server. In many cases this isn't a big deal, but if you want to SHARE your project, or you are working on a library module, etc, then you have to pass on the problem - you have to include instructions and dependencies and so on for the external setup.

2. The JUnitShell does not support noserver. This means GWTTestCase based tests don't work with noserver (these GWT tests ARE needed in many cases, as they are the only real way to unit test translatable objects and both ends of GWT RPC - another discussion but suffice to say just abandoning GWTTestCase is usually not appropriate either - except in rare circumstances where you don't use RPC, and you don't have any client side other than UI [meaning no model or controller on the client]).