Allow Dependencies: header to be empty, don't throw exception or fail deployment startup ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Key: AS7-6975 URL: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/AS7-6975 Project: Application Server 7 Issue Type: Feature Request Components: Class Loading Environment: EAP6.1 Reporter: Darryl Miles Assignee: David Lloyd Exception throw for empty "Dependencies:" header in MANIFEST.MF. This is a perfectly well-formed header and should have the same meaning as if the header does not exist. By all means emit a warning explaining which JAR the MANIFEST.MF is in, the header name and that the value is an empty string and this is not allow (due to some spec/rule you cite). But don't fail a deployment from starting. Sometimes headers are not going to be perfect from dependent JARs you have little control over. You don't want to make the user do extra work of repacking/fixing those JAR just to get them to deploy on JBoss AS. If the empty header has a special meaning then I suggest you use a keyword token instead. Like you do for "export", "services" and "optional".