But wouldn't it make more sense if the deployment annotations went into the DEPLOYMENT scope rather than the INSTANCE scope? i.e. there is no merge, just the normal overrides by scope This would also some other deployer to modify them. I didn't remember adding annotations to kernel deployments :-) so I went back to the original change http://viewvc.jboss.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/jbossas?view=rev&revision=... and from the date of that located the forum thread http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=100349 The issue appears to be that for the plain deployment, we don't necessarily have the classloader from which we can create the annotations. e.g. | <deployment> | <classloader><inject name="BeanConstructedLaterOrInThisFile"></classloader> | <annotation&gt;(a)from.that.Classloader&lt;/annotation&gt; | </deployment> | This could in principle also apply to the VDF, but more often than not we can use the DeploymentUnit's classloader. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4193834#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...