I've been following the example on the maven-ear-plugin site that shows how to add third-party libraries to the generated application.xml. However, it does not appear to be working as I expected. Similarly the web module contextRoot is being ignored.
According to the documentation what I am trying to do should be entirely possible.
The context root of a Web module might be customized using the contextRoot parameter.
Please note that third party libraries (i.e. JarModule) are not included in the generated application.xml (only ejb-client should be included in a java entry). However, a jar dependency could be included in the generated application.xml by specifying the includeInApplicationXml flag.
I have the following output when it executes the build in my application.xml.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE application PUBLIC
    "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD J2EE Application 1.3//EN"
    "http://java.sun.com/dtd/application_1_3.dtd">
<application>
  <display-name>MyApp.EAR</display-name>
  <module>
    <ejb>MyApp.jar</ejb>
  </module>
  <module>
    <web>
      <web-uri>MyApp.war</web-uri>
      <context-root>/MyApp.Web</context-root>
    </web>
  </module>
</application>
From the following maven configuraton (pom.xml).
...
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.blah</groupId>
<artifactId>MyApp.EAR</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<packaging>ear</packaging>
<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>maven-ear-plugin</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.7</version>
            <configuration>
                <applicationName>MyApp</applicationName>
                <modules>
                    <ejbModule>
                        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
                        <artifactId>MyApp.EJB</artifactId>
                    </ejbModule>
                    <webModule>
                        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
                        <artifactId>MyApp.Web</artifactId>
                        <contextRoot>MyApp</contextRoot>
                    </webModule>
                    <jarModule>
                        <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
                        <artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
                        <includeLibInApplicationXml>true</includeLibInApplicationXml>
                    </jarModule>
                </modules>
                <archive>
                    <manifestEntries>
                        <WebLogic-Application-Version>${weblogic.version}</WebLogic-Application-Version>
                    </manifestEntries>
                </archive>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>
<dependencies>
    <!-- web and ejb modules -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
        <artifactId>MyApp.EJB</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
        <type>ejb</type>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.blah</groupId>
        <artifactId>MyApp.Web</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
        <type>war</type>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>
...
It is immediately obvious that the application.xml is not being generated as I intended.
- The contextRoot supplied is not correct in the application.xml, instead the default name of MyApp.Web is output instead of the specified MyApp.
 - The org.slf4j jarModule specified is missing entirely from the application.xml.
 
What am I doing wrong?
Debug from Maven is shown below.
[DEBUG] -----------------------------------------------------------------------
[DEBUG] Goal:          org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-ear-plugin:2.4.2:generate-application-xml (default-generate-application-xml)
[DEBUG] Style:         Regular
[DEBUG] Configuration: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
  <description>${project.description}</description>
  <displayName>${project.artifactId}</displayName>
  <encoding default-value="UTF-8"/>
  <generatedDescriptorLocation>${project.build.directory}</generatedDescriptorLocation>
  <includeLibInApplicationXml default-value="false"/>
  <project>${project}</project>
  <version default-value="1.3"/>
  <workDirectory>${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}</workDirectory>
</configuration>
P.S. I tried creating the maven-ear-plugin tag, but it would not let me as I am not reputable enough! If someone could create that I would be grateful.