Add a test that answers this question:

Can an extension register a bean programmatically for a class that resides in another non-bean archive?

This question requires a short example which is available in the OpenTCK test suite and may be ported to the CDI TCK [1].

Assume one archive, a.jar, has the following contents:

org/opentck/javaee/cdi/spi/beforebeandiscovery/BeanClassToRegister.class

A second archive, b.jar, has the following contents:

org/opentck/javaee/cdi/spi/beforebeandiscovery/AnotherBeanClassToRegister.class
org/opentck/javaee/cdi/spi/beforebeandiscovery/AnotherManualBeanRegistrationExtension.class
org/opentck/javaee/cdi/spi/beforebeandiscovery/ManualBeanRegistrationExtension.class
META-INF/services/javax.enterprise.inject.spi.Extension

AnotherBeanClassToRegister has an injection point of type BeanClassToRegister:

public class AnotherBeanClassToRegister

BeanClassToRegister and AnotherBeanClassToRegister are added as beans programmatically in respective extensions listed in the service provider descriptor:

public class ManualBeanRegistrationExtension implements Extension {
public void registerBeans(@Observes BeforeBeanDiscovery event, BeanManager bm)

}

public class AnotherManualBeanRegistrationExtension implements Extension {
public void registerBeans(@Observes BeforeBeanDiscovery event, BeanManager bm)

}

The two libraries, a.jar and b.jar are bundled in a web archive, test.war

WEB-INF/lib/a.jar
WEB-INF/lib/b.jar
WEB-INF/beans.xml

Deploying this archive to the reference implementation fails with an error message that the injection point from above cannot be satisfied. There appears to be a visibility problem across bean archives in this case.

Adding META-INF/beans.xml to a.jar and removing the ManualBeanRegistrationExtension from b.jar resolves the issue in the reference implementation.

[1] https://github.com/opentck/javaee_cdi/tree/master/src/test/java/org/opentck/javaee/cdi/spi/beforebeandiscovery