So, a quick analysis might confirm your suspicions of HDScanner doing the scan() "too soon". I may be confused, of course, but here's my amateur analysis... While HDScanner itself is a BOOTSTRAP bean, I assume it gets completely start()'d and running before the DEPLOYER phase. When start()'d, it scan()'s. Conceivably scanning deploy/ for APPLICATION before all deployers have been deployed. Hence getChildren(...) on deploy/ not being enabled to view .rails archives as vfszips. Maybe. :) Looking at my log timestamps, I see... | 16:11:20,978 TRACE [HDScanner] Begin deployment scan | Then a while later (5 seconds), my log indicates the JEP installation from my deployer in the deployers/ directory. | 16:11:25,860 INFO [RailsStructure] getJarExtension()... | I don't know the implementation of the solution, but seems like some barrier on the start()/scan() of HDScanner to hold it until the DEPLOYER phase is completely completed, perhaps. For now, I can just use ".jar" as an extension. Thanks, -Bob View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4193270#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...