I tried to follow an example from the WLS9.1 web services documentation that uses the JWSC Ant task. I got the error message:
Deployment descriptor: tempdir\_9tdo9x\web.xml does not exist.
I found a message in the BEA forums that suggested using BEA's setDomainEnv command before running the Ant task. This worked, but complicates using a stock "headless" Ant build (e.g. running within Eclipse or CruiseControl). I had found a similar bug in WLS8.1's source2wsdd Ant task (the other WLS8.1 Ant tasks had no such dependencies).
I ran Ant with -debug and saw this:
Deployment descriptor: C:\DOCUME~1\MM\LOCALS~1\Temp\_9tdo9x\web.xml does not exist.
at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.War.setWebxml(War.java:84)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.anttasks.JwscTask.jar(JwscTask.java:397)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.anttasks.JwscTask.pkg(JwscTask.java:331)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.anttasks.JwscTask.execute(JwscTask.java:166)
the option explode="true" on the jws subelement of the jwsc task, then the process seems to proceed a little bit further, but then dies for a completely different reason:
java.lang.AssertionError: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: weblogic.j2ee.descriptor.ApplicationBeanImpl
at weblogic.descriptor.internal.DescriptorImpl.createRootBean(DescriptorImpl.java:357)
at weblogic.descriptor.DescriptorManager.createDescriptorRoot(DescriptorManager.java:328)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.jws.build.EarFile.getApplicationBean(EarFile.java:127)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.jws.build.EarFile.addWebModule(EarFile.java:61)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.anttasks.JwscTask.addToEar(JwscTask.java:230)
at weblogic.wsee.tools.anttasks.JwscTask.execute(JwscTask.java:167)
That last one looks like a typical Ant classloader problem since the named class actually *does* exist in weblogic.jar. I looked at the code for DescriptorImpl.createRootBean() and found that it was hard-coded to use the thread's class loader (instead of using its own class loader). In an Ant context, the implications of this are complex, resulting in the exhibited failure.
[I later found a workaround.]
