I had managed to get it working by doing: s:link view="/login.xhtml" action="#{identity.logout}" value="Logout" />, basically that logs you out and displays the logout message that our front end guy wants, however until I had put BUILD_BEFORE_RESTORE in place, it kept giving view state exceptions when I tried to log back in.
So you are trying to work around the "user sits on the login page for too long and it times out". There are two alternative ways to work around this problem without BUILD_BEFORE_RESTORE.
#1. You can put a timer on the login page to automatically refresh itself after a fixed about of time so that the user always has a fresh page. You can simply use a meta tag for this or you can get fancy and do JavaScript.
#2. You can use a plain form rather than a JSF form and then process the login using a page action. You can still submit via post, but it will be treated like an initial request. The username and password will be available for injection using @RequestParameter or bound to an object using page parameters.
Give either of those a try and see how it works out for you. Perhaps we can get those suggestions in the knowledgebase.
I'm hoping the transition to Seam 3.0 and JSF 2.0 will be as painless as possible, which is another reason I'm trying to get involved in the dev list, as it seems it's the best place for information on it and over time I want to see how I can contribute to it.
It's going to be a while before we can even begin to talk about migration. Folks getting involved with Seam 3 now should understand that they are coding for something that is "next generation". While there will be a smooth way to use Seam 2 components, the very nature of Seam 3 changes rather significantly because JSR-299 is a quite a stark change in mindset. But it's really too early to make any statement about what the path will look like...you can certainly have input in what it will be, though.
-Dan