The EAR file that build using Ant 1.7 is not working when deployed in Websphere Appliction server for JEE 5. Version. As per the Spec, application.xml is not required for JEE 5. We used Ant script to built EAR file for JEE 5 Project. appxml attribute of EAR task is required when update attribute is false. We don't need to specify appxml attribute as our applicaiton does not have it. We built EAR file using ear task with update attribute as false. Ant script built ear file. But, when we deployed it on the application server we got below exception, Root exception is org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.DeploymentDescriptorLoadException: META-INF/application.xml] But, insted of using our Ant script, when we export EAR from the IDE and deployed it in Application server it is working. As a short term fix, insted of using ear task we used jar task to built our EAR file. Suggest us whether this approach is fine.
The ear task predates JavaEE5. I don't understand whether you finally provide some appxml or not when things fail. Using jar instead of ear should be fine since the ear task is the jar task with special handling for appxml added (which you don't seem to need).