I'm sorry I assumed that others were having this problem as well, and the build code was not needed. I assumed this because the manifest in the lib/commons-logging.jar specifically reference "log4j.jar log4j-core.jar" on the classpath (which do not exist).

Yes, we are using Ant. Code below. Thanks for looking.

<path id="jboss.compile.classpath">
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/lib">
 <include name="**/*.jar" />
 </fileset>
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/server/all/lib">
 <include name="**/*.jar" />
 </fileset>
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/server/all/deploy/ejb3.deployer">
 <include name="*.jar" />
 </fileset>
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/server/all/deploy/jboss-aop-jdk50.deployer">
 <include name="*.jar" />
 </fileset>
</path>

<path id="compile.classpath">
 <path refid="jboss.compile.classpath"/>
 <path refid="testng.compile.classpath"/>
</path>

<javac destdir="${classes.dir}"
 source="${jcompiler.version}"
 target="${jcompiler.version}"
 deprecation="on"
 debug="${jcompiler.debug}"
 optimize="${jcompiler.optimize}">

 <classpath>
 <path refid="compile.classpath"/>
 </classpath>
 <src path="${src.dir}/java/"/>
 <compilerarg value="-Xlint" compiler="javac1.5"/>
</javac>

We are building server components, beans, web services, etc. I thought the client libs were for client applications accessing jboss as opposed to running within (but I might very well be confused... still learning).

It works if I use :

<path id="jboss.compile.classpath">
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/client" includes="**/jbossall-client.jar" />
 <!--fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/lib">
 <include name="**/*.jar" />
 </fileset>
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/server/all/lib">
 <include name="**/*.jar" />
 </fileset-->
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/server/all/deploy/ejb3.deployer">
 <include name="*.jar" />
 </fileset>
 <fileset dir="${jboss.dir}/server/all/deploy/jboss-aop-jdk50.deployer">
 <include name="*.jar" />
 </fileset>
 </path>