help please

I have a seam EAR project that used to deploy - and has now stopped.

essentially its doing an exploded deploy (at least i cant find any .ear archive in the source tree.

the EarContent/META-INF/application.xml file in the eclipse workspace ear project, and all the code compiles.

when i start jboss in eclipse and tell it to deply the project - eclipse copies the ear project to the deploy directory - however it doesnt copy the application.xml for the jboss deploy directory META-INF directory!

it does copy the jboss-app.xml file though.

the deployer reader then fails with the error.

21:06:56,649 INFO [EARDeployer] Init J2EE application: file:/C:/jboss/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/deploy/ForstersList-ear.ear/
21:06:56,649 ERROR [MainDeployer] Could not initialise deployment: file:/C:/jboss/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/deploy/ForstersList-ear.ear/
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException: No META-INF/application.xml found
 at org.jboss.deployment.EARDeployer.init(EARDeployer.java:146)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.init(MainDeployer.java:872)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:809)
 at org.jboss.deployment.MainDeployer.deploy(MainDeployer.java:782)
 at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor20.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
 at org.jboss.mx.util.MBeanProxyExt.invoke(MBeanProxyExt.java:210)
 at $Proxy9.deploy(Unknown Source)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.deploy(URLDeploymentScanner.java:421)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.URLDeploymentScanner.scan(URLDeploymentScanner.java:634)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.doScan(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:263)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.loop(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:274)
 at org.jboss.deployment.scanner.AbstractDeploymentScanner$ScannerThread.run(AbstractDeploymentScanner.java:225)

worse i have another simple app (hello world) and that does deolpy the application.xml file - but i cant see what controls this. My real app just doesnt.

I have had other problems when you deploy and jboss tools doesnt deploy the seam jar files - however if i copy them in by hand - the deployer detects that and then completes the deploy -

cant understand that either.

get a problem un undeploy as well where is essentially reports a similar problem - whilst annoying this doesnt usually stop you redeploying.

whats going on - any ideas please i cant work like this its stopping me get on with the design