I'm following the JBoss.net documentation which is about web-services. I've been trying to get a .wsr file (jar formatted) into the ear file AND ensure it's registered in the application.xml as a module. The maven ear plugin does not support this (it's even documented that it doesn't). I want this so I fixed this in my local environment and I encourage the Maven developers to roll this change so that everyone can benefit. What I did to fix this was modify the goal: ear:generate-ear-descriptor with 2 changes. I removed the J:when test for jar file extensions. Then I added at the bottom this: <j:otherwise> <j:if test="${dep.getProperty('ear.module')=='true'}"> <x:element name="module"> <x:element name="java">${dep.getArtifact()}</x:element> </x:element> </j:if> </j:otherwise>