Looking in the source code for org.jboss.system.server.ServerImpl [1]

• this class is setting the URLStreamHandlerFactory and also calling preload and specifying the java.protocol.hanlder.pkgs.

URL.setURLStreamHandlerFactory(new URLStreamHandlerFactory());

// Preload JBoss URL handlers
URLStreamHandlerFactory.preload()
...
System.setProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs", handlerPkgs);

So it looks like there isn't a way to change the URLStreamHandlerFactory that is used and the instance of URLStreamHandlerFactory created is not accessible to add new protocols.

Is there anything I'm missing, it looks like this should be a feature, I've found a few posts on the net mentioning other app servers allow you to specify the Factory class to use.

The exception is:
java.net.MalformedURLException: unknown protocol: classpath

[1] http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/jbossas/tags/JBPAPP_4_3_0_GA_CP08/system/src/main/org/jboss/system/server/ServerImpl.java
[2] http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/common/common-core/tags/jboss-common-core-2.0.4.GA/src/main/java/org/jboss/net/protocol/URLStreamHandlerFactory.java
[3] http://community.jboss.org/message/288238?tstart=0