How do I redeploy an application when change a file in an exploded deployment directory

Touch the top level descriptor. Updating the file works as well as it changes the timestamp.

Here are the descriptors for the most common archive types:

.JAR

   META-INF/ejb-jar.xml

.WAR

WEB-INF/web.xml

.EAR

META-INF/application.xml

.SAR

META-INF/jboss-service.xml

AS-5

In JBossAS-5, META-INF/jboss-beans.xml or META-INF/*-jboss-beans.xml too are considered top level deployment descriptors.

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=ExplodedDeployment

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=DeployTipsAndBuildSampleScripts