Just had a look at the JEE 5 spec (JSR 244), section EE.8.1.2Application Assembly talks about how to put together .ear files and section EE.8.2Library Support goes on to describe how to include libraries. Option 2 in section 8.1.2: anonymous wrote : A .ear file may contain a directory that contains libraries packaged in JAR files. The library-directory element of the .ear file?s deployment descriptor contains the name of this directory. If a library-directory element isn?t specified, | or if the .ear file does not contain a deployment descriptor, the directory named lib is used. An empty library-directory element may be used to specify | that there is no library directory. | All files in this directory (but not subdirectories) with a .jar extension must be made available to all components packaged in the EAR file, including application clients. These libraries may reference other libraries, either bundled | with the application or installed separately, using any of the techniques described herein. Which sounds like what you are trying to achieve? That whole section is probably worth a read as it covers the whole ear assembly... View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=3983699#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...