JPA 2.0: Adding entity classes to PersistenceUnit *from different jar* automatically

Question

I have a maven-built CDI-based Java SE app, which has a core module, and other modules.
Core has the persistence.xml and some entities. Modules hav

Answer 1

I have a slightly different setup where I am placing persistence.xml in the WAR file but some of its dependencies includes @Entity annotated classed to include in the persistence unit.

I have solved my problem using Maven a bit like Adrian Shum described in #3, but using the element to include the jars to be scanned for @Entity annotations.

I added a property to my-web/pom.xml for each dependency including extra entities. All my jars are part of a Maven multiproject build so for me it looks like.

    common-${project.version}.jar
    foo-${project.version}.jar

I thereafter add the following to the persistence.xml

    
        java:jboss/datasources/mysource

        lib/${common.jar}
        lib/${foo.jar}

        ...
    

Lastly I configure the maven-resource-plugin in web/pom.xml to replace the $expressions in persistence.xml with the properties set in the POM

  
    
      src/main/resources
      true
      
        **/persistence.xml
      
    
    
      src/main/resources
      false
      
        **/persistence.xml
      
    
  
  ...