OK, this is not really the topic of this forum (see sticky), but since it's an interesting topic, and I (re)wrote most of VFS, I'll help you. :-) anonymous wrote : | Where can I find the VFS spec? | There is no spec. This is JBoss custom virtual-file-system. Try here: - http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/JBoss5VirtualFileSystem - http://wiki.jboss.org/auth/wiki/JBoss5DeploymentFramework The idea of VFS is to be structure agnostic - no diff between 'walking' over directories/files and jars/entries. So besides vfsfile, there are vfszip and vfsjar protocols - used for (nested)*archive handling. vfszip is new impl of vfsjar, removing locking issues that we had on Windows. So, take a look, and if you have any questions, simply post here and I'll try to answer. btw: which Spring class is doing this? View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4161066#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...