Most of our samples simply include .composite files on the classpath, i.e. under the target/classes dir as generated by mvn. The Tuscany contribution service will look here and load any .composite files that it finds. There are other alternatives

sca-contributions

Something to do with hot deployment of contributions. Don't understand this yet

META-INF/sca-contribution.xml

If you have a contribution in a directory say.

/my/contribution/dir

Then all components in composites under this directory will be located by the contribution service and any composites that are named in the sca-contribution.xml file will be automatically be included in the deployable list maintained by the contribution, for example

/my/contribution/dir/META-INF/sca-contribution.xml
/my/contribution/dir/mycomposite.composite

Where sca-contribution.xml is

<contribution xmlns="http://www.osoa.org/xmlns/sca/1.0"
targetNamespace="http://mycomposite"
xmlns:management="http://mycomposite">
<deployable composite="mycomposite:MyComposite"/>
</contribution>

META-INF/sca-deployables/

If you have a contribution in a directory say.

/my/contribution/dir

Then all components in composites under this directory will be located by the contribution service and any composites under the directory /META-INF/sca-deployables/ will be automatically be included in the deployable list maintained by the contribution, for example

/my/contribution/dir/META-INF/sca-deployables/mycomposite.composite