war plugin documentation and probably implementation is unaware of javaee 5

The example I'm aware of:
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-war-plugin/examples/skinny-wars.html talks about using the war's manifest.mf classpath to include jars in the ear in the war module's classloader. In ee5, there's a ear lib directory: everything in that is automatically included in the ear level classloader, which is certainly available to every war, most likely by being a parent classloader to the war classloader. One consequence of this is that using the manifest classpath in a 1.4 container will likely result in each war getting separate copies of the lib jar classes whereas the ee5 lib directory will result in shared classes.