And all this override would be via management API's, not doable with any deployment-scanner operations?  

i.e. can I do something like:

cd overridestuff
cp * to /data/contents/xyz.war/ 

now xyz.war has an "incomplete" override of xyz.war
which will be "overlayed" on to deployment named xyz.war (independent on wether it comes from deployment scanner or management api)

or is it all just via management api's that would need to be executed on every restart/change to the data/contents folder ?

/max