I'm currently looking into implementing the new resource adapter deployers for JCA 1.6 (JBJCA-35).

The chain must be able to handle the following

1) ra.xml
2) jboss-ra.xml
3) JCA 1.6 annotated classes

from within a .RAR archive.

1) and 3) are specified by the JCA specification and 2) is our specific deployment descriptor.

This means that we need something like

1) RaXmlParsingDeployer (PARSE)
2) JBossRaXmlParsingDeployer (PARSE)
3) RaAnnotationScannerDeployer (POST_CLASSLOADER)
4) RaMergeMetadataDeployer (PRE_REAL)
5) RaDeployer (REAL)

1) and 2) - the metadata is defined in the JBMETA project.
3) - is done if ra.xml::metadata-complete == false.
4) - merges the metadata between the previous three deployers as we must make sure to override information from 3)
5) - creates the BeanMetaData

One question is if I need a second deployer in the PRE_REAL stage that adds the dependencies to other deployment units as defined in jboss-ra.xml
if we create annotations for describing the dependencies - e.g. RaDependencyDeployer. Otherwise this could go in the DESCRIBE phase.

If this sounds correct - what are the best class to extend from in each deployer (AbstractVFSParsingDeployer, AbstractSimpleRealDeployer, ...) ? There are various different solutions to each of the stages.

btw - is there any API documentation online that I could link my JavaDoc against ?

Ideas, comments or flames welcomed :)