[kenfinni]

Hanspeter,

For Java EE 6 it is possible to deploy an EJB jar on it's own, but I believe that a CDI bean needs to be triggered by a WAR or EAR deployment.

Please see: http://seamframework.org/Community/SeamSolderClassloadingIssueOnJBoss6

[hpgisler]

Ken,

Yes, for @Local beans, that certainly makes sense. But what about @Remote interfaces? They could be looked up and used via JNDI remotely, without necessitating a local caller inside WAR or EAR, couldn't they?

[kenfinni]

Hanspeter,

True, but for a CDI bean to be present it needs to reside within a WAR or EAR.  It can be inside a JAR, but that JAR must be deployed inside a WAR/EAR for it to work as I don't believe a JAR deployed on it's own is supported by CDI, though it is for EJBs.

[hpgisler]

Ken,

I've searched a bit more and found:
CDI spec

There it says:

In an application deployed as an EJB jar, the container searches the EJB jar, if it is a bean archive, and every bean archive referenced by the EJB jar.

and further up:

Bean classes of enabled beans must be deployed in bean archives.

and

A directory in the JVM classpath is a bean archive if it has a file named beans.xml in the META-INF directory.

however

The container is not required to support application client jar bean archives.

If I do understand this correctly, an EJB deployed jar should be able to discover beans for injection which are located outside of the EJB if they are located in a directory, however the beans are not required to be discovered (by spec) if they are packaged inside a jar which is referenced by the EJB-jar.

Is this correct understanding or do I measread it?

As far as I can tell (I have tried this), cdi injection works with a EJB which is is deployed as a jar (which is not further packaged inside EAR or WAR) IFF the to be injected CDI bean is also located inside this same EJB-jar. However, if the to be injected CDI bean is located outside EJB-jar, bean discovery seems not to work (as stated earlier, I belive this has to do with some classpath issues).

What do you think?

P.S. Please note, this is not a killer issue for me anymore, as it works when deploying inside EAR, it just bothers me, that I don't seem to be able to understand the whole mechanism correctly. In short: I don't want to steal your precious time with this topic.

[kenfinni]

Hanspeter,

I think it should work both when the bean being injected is in another EJB bean archive or in a directory.

The key might be how the EJB jar is referenced to another.  Haven't deployed EJB archives so not sure what does and doesn't work, but it could be a manifest issue in the jars.

If not, there may be a bug in the spec implementation of either Weld or the app server.