It appears that when creating a new JBoss AS server instance in eclipse, JBoss Tools will create the needed temporary deploy directory for you.

If that directory later goes missing then publish will stop working and the error messages, while indicating a copy error, don't show what file path is really missing. A sample eclipse error show below is shown for each file that failed to deploy.

Recreating the temporary directory resolves the problem. Presumably this could either be tested for during publish, or the directory could just be recreated since its temporary anyway.

Following is one of the eclipse copy errors:

eclipse.buildId=unknown
java.version=1.6.0_03
java.vendor=Sun Microsystems Inc.
BootLoader constants: OS=win32, ARCH=x86, WS=win32, NL=en_US
Command-line arguments: -os win32 -ws win32 -arch x86

Error
Mon Nov 19 11:59:58 MST 2007
Error copying file: C:\jboss-4.2.2.GA\server\default\deploy\spades-ear.ear\spades-ejb.jar\META-INF\e
jb-jar.xml to META-INF\ejb-jar.xml

java.io.IOException: The system cannot find the path specified
at java.io.WinNTFileSystem.createFileExclusively(Native Method)
at java.io.File.checkAndCreate(Unknown Source)
at java.io.File.createTempFile(Unknown Source)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.xpl.PublishUtil.copyFile(PublishUtil.java:98)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.xpl.PublishUtil.copyFile(PublishUtil.java:450)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.xpl.PublishUtil.copy(PublishUtil.java:505)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.xpl.PublishUtil.publishFull(PublishUtil.java:481)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.xpl.PublishUtil.copy(PublishUtil.java:496)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.xpl.PublishUtil.publishFull(PublishUtil.java:481)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.publishers.JstPublisher.fullPublish(JstPublisher.java:129)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.publishers.JstPublisher.publishModule(JstPublisher.java:111)
at org.jboss.ide.eclipse.as.core.server.internal.DeployableServerBehavior.publishModule(DeployableSe
rverBehavior.java:130)
at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.model.ServerBehaviourDelegate.publishModule(ServerBehaviourDelegate.j
ava:749)
at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.model.ServerBehaviourDelegate.publishModules(ServerBehaviourDelegate.
java:835)
at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.model.ServerBehaviourDelegate.publish(ServerBehaviourDelegate.java:66
9)
at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server.doPublish(Server.java:887)
at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server.publish(Server.java:874)
at org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.PublishServerJob.run(PublishServerJob.java:72)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:55)