JBOSS 7.1.1 Ear with External Jar dependency

[stonesoft]

I am currently transitioning from Jboss 5 to 7.  Our application has multiple jars which use a utilities jar.  I can make my stuff work if I include the utilities jar in my ear, include appplication.xml in the ear META-INF, and include jboss-deployment-structure.xml and MANIFEST.MF in the jar META-INF.  Has anyone found another way to make the utilities jar available to the ear?  Don't point me to the documentation, I've tried just about every variation of creating a module and trying to get my ear to use it.

[rsearls]

Defning a module would be the way to go.

What issue did you encounter in creating a module for it?

[jaikiran]

Kevin Stone wrote:

Our application has multiple jars which use a utilities jar.  I can make my stuff work if I include the utilities jar in my ear, include appplication.xml in the ear META-INF, and include jboss-deployment-structure.xml and MANIFEST.MF in the jar META-INF. 

The Java EE spec specified portable way of doing it is packaging that utility jar within the .ear/lib folder (create the lib folder if it isn't there). You don't see any of JBoss specific deployment descriptors for that to work.

[stonesoft]

The problem I had with a module was that JBOSS 7.1.1 seemed to hang when my jar tried to invoke a method in the other jar.  Here is what I did.

First, I created the folder $JBOSS_HOME/modules/mymod/jar/main

I put the myutils.jar file into that folder.

I created the the module.xml file in the folder:

    <module xmlns="urn:jboss:module:1.0" name="mymod.myutils.jar">
        <dependencies>
            <module name="javax.jms.api"/>
            <module name="javax.jws.api"/>
            <module name="javax.xml.bind.api"/>
            <module name="javax.xml.ws.api"/>
            <module name="org.apache.commons.cli"/>
            <module name="org.apache.commons.pool"/>
            <module name="org.apache.log4j"/>
            <module name="org.junit"/>
        </dependencies>
     <resources>
          <resource-root path="myutils.jar"/>
     </resources>
</module>

In the myutils.jar there is a class called QueueUtils and it has a method sendMessage that sends a message to a hornet queue.

Second I created my jar, myapp.jar.  In it I have a method that calls the sendMessage method in QueueUtils.

I also included a jboss-deployment-structure.xml in the META-INF folder of myapp.jar.  It has myutils.jar as a dependency:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<jboss-deployment-structure>
  <deployment>
     <dependencies>
        <module name="javax.ejb.api"/>
        <module name="javax.inject.api"/>
        <module name="javax.jms.api"/>
        <module name="javax.jws.api"/>
        <module name="javax.persistence.api"/>
        <module name="javax.transaction.api"/>
        <module name="javax.xml.bind.api"/>
        <module name="javax.xml.ws.api"/>
        <module name="org.apache.commons.cli"/>
        <module name="org.apache.log4j"/>
        <module name="org.jboss.ejb3"/>
        <module name="mymod.myutils.jar"/>

     </dependencies>
  </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure>

Third I deployed myapp.jar.  It deployed OK and I could see in the debug that it loaded the myutils.jar as a dependency.

Finally, I ran a test where a class in myapp.jar calls the QueueUtils sendMessage method.  I have log.info message as the very first line in QueueUtils.sendMessage.

When the call is made, it never completes, no error, nothing.  I don't see the log.info in the server log.

As far a using a lib in an ear, I really can't create myapp.ear abd put myutils.jar in a lib foder because we have many other jars that use the myutils.jar.

I can't imagine everytime a change is made to myutils having to redeploy 10 ears on 20+ servers.

Thanks for any help you can provide

Oh, and also:  When I put QueueUtils into myapp.jar the call works.

[th.janssen]

The name of your module in module.xml has to match the path. So it has to be $JBOSS_HOME/modules/mymod/myutils/jar/main