I've got an ear application which I need to deploy several times in different configurations. At the moment I facilitate a build script to generate different versions of all deployment descriptors but this is tedious.

Now I tried to use the alt-dd element within the application.xml file which would let me centralize the deployment logic. However, it seems to me that jboss is ignoring this element.

Assuming that I want to supply an alternativ web.xml descriptor to a webapp located within an ear app. The Alternative web-descriptor is placed within the ear on the path META-INF/conf/web.xml
The webapp also contains it's original web descriptor.

I wonder whether I would have to specify the URL PATH within the alt-dd element, e.g. META-INF/conf or whether I need to include the file as well, e.g. META-INF/conf/web.xml
I tried out both but without success. JBoss didn't log an error or warning message but also didn't take the alternative deployment descriptor.

Also, I believe that in order for the alt-dd mechanism to be useful, it should be possible to use alternative jboss-deployment descriptors as well.

If I specify that I would like to use an alternative web.xml descriptor, I would most likely also want to be able to use an alternative jboss-web.xml descriptor. How would that work?