Henk - yes, this is what happens when you run in Debug mode and eclipse warns you if it can't hotswap the content of the classes via the debugger.
but this is not about updating the deployed artifacts, this is done via remote connections to the JVM.
Thus again, JBoss does not currently nor before actively pick up changes in changed .class files; if it did everything, would be fine because the WTP deployer actually do update the .class files :)