On a new release, I edit the entity*.xml file for my Oracle datasource, run ant orion, copy the .ear to $ORION_HOME/applications and edit the server.xml so the jira application points to the new ear.

When the server.xml is saved, the new .ear is noticed by orion and auto-unpacked (as well as the .war). However, on bootstrap of this new application (not sure if it bootstraps itself or if it is on response to the first hit on jira home URL), webwork.config.XMLActionConfiguration still uses the previous location ($ORION_HOME/applications/atlassian-jira-1.0RC2 versus $ORION_HOME/applications/atlassian-jira-1.0RC3).

Is it unreasonnable to expect hot deploy of a new version ?

For the time being, I would suggest mentionning that an orion server restart is needed (or maybe I didn't read the doc/instructions correctly ...).