Sorry to resurrect this, I was meant to post on the topic couple of weeks ago, but forgot to.
With the work in
https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS-6330
I believe we can emulate the 4.x deployment API in 5.
If this API uses mostly basic java types (javax.management, String, etc.) then the library dependency issue comes down to the remoting layer.
Can we not just use the standard JMX rmi connector that comes with JDK5+?
E.g. I can point jconsole to a running AS instance and access the mbeans, as long as I stick to standard java types:
jconsole service:jmx:rmi://127.0.0.1/jndi/rmi://127.0.0.1:1090/jmxconnector