[FIXED] When and why would I need a jboss-deployment-structure.xml for a Spring application?

Issue

I am trying to understand how to use JBoss EAP6 with Spring applications. I have a sample OpenShift application and it contains a jboss-deployment-structure.xml file.

I found some documentation about this file, but I am not clear why and when one should use those files with Spring applications. The content is the following:

<jboss-deployment-structure xmlns="urn:jboss:deployment-structure:1.0">
   <deployment>
       <dependencies>
            <module name="com.h2database.h2"/>
            <module name="org.codehaus.jackson.jackson-core-asl"/>
            <module name="org.codehaus.jackson.jackson-mapper-asl"/>
            <module name="org.slf4j"/>
       </dependencies>
   </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure>

Why does one need to declare dependencies to modules? And what are modules in the JBoss paradigm? Is it possible to live without this xml file?

Solution

As long as you don't have any classloading problems with your application you don't need the jboss-deployment-structure.xml file. But once you have trouble of such kind the dependency management in jboss-deployment-structure.xml would be your friend.

The article Modularized Java with JBoss Modules explains what modules are very well.

I think in short you can say that everything that is deployed as WAR, JAR or EAR is a module. These modules are referred to as dynamic modules. Beside them there are static modules in $JBOSS_HOME/modules. The only difference is how they are packaged.

Answered By - Thomas

Answer Checked By - David Marino (PHPFixing Volunteer)