Package all .class files in a jar along with META-INF/jboss-aop.xml
You do not always have to use the system property jboss.aop.path to specify JBossAOP XML files. By default, JBossAOP will also look in your classpath for any URL that matches META-INF/jboss-aop.xml. The example in this directly is take from the method-execution example. Instead of using declaring jboss.aop.path as a system property, this example instead packages up all the .class files in a jar along with META-INF/jboss-aop.xml in the resources directory. C:\jboss\jboss-head\aop\tmp\docs\examples\packaging>jar -tf example.jar META-INF/ META-INF/MANIFEST.MF Driver.class MethodInterceptor.class POJO$Bar.class POJO.class SimpleInterceptor.class META-INF/jboss-aop.xml You can turn off this classpath behavior by using the jboss.aop.search.classpath=false system property. By default it is on. (FYI, it is off by default when running in the JBoss Application Server).