Hi there :). I've been reading the forums trying to find a solution for my problem, but to no avail. I am posting this in the hope that someone can point me to an obvious "duh!" solution.

My story: I have taken over an existing project which uses JBoss to deploy a large ear file. Having optimized the build environment (which was in mild neglect), I would now like to optimize the deployment if at all possible.

When I took over the project, it would pack jars and stuff into a large ear file, copy it to the local JBoss deployment directory, followed by JBoss working like mad for about 30 seconds redeploying the thing. I have now chosen to use exploded deployment, saving the packing part and most of the copying in most cases. However, it is still a bottleneck that JBoss redeploys the entire application. As far as I can tell from the forums, there is no way to avoid that, right?

I've tried another approach too, but it seemed impossible and probably was. Since my application is structured in well defined layers with well defined dependencies, the first idea was to split the large ear into several smaller ears and deploy each one. However, I couldn't get that to work at all, maybe due to my limited understanding of JBoss. Would that be a viable path to take if I did it right or is it just plain impossible?

I have also considered if I should find a way to test my code without redeploying every time. I might look into that ..

I guess I should note that although the development cycle is not really bad (build and redeploy in about one minute), and even though some may argue that I shouldn't complain, if there is an easy wayto bring it down, I'll do that. I would like to at least cut this time in half. IMHO it only takes 30 seconds before your mind is guaranteed to wander off into open space and to forget which particular thing you are testing at the moment ... or that mey just be my mind :)