Websphere 8.5: Root exception is org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.exception.DeploymentDescriptorLoadException: WEB-INF/web.xml

After much searching (even posted a bounty on a similar problem), I found the issue was comments in the web.xml.

I was lucky enough to have a source branch that didn't have the comments and worked and this other branch that did have the comments and was broke. Different installers from different branches is what allowed the installers to work on some machines, and this other branch installer breaking on my machine.

Removing the comments allowed WebSphere's validator to get past that error... fun stuff... will report it to the WebSphere guys.

Please check the application.xml file in ear which has the correct war file name and also check the ejb module jar names. you will get similar error if there is a mismatch in war or ejb jar file names. My case I have issue in the war file name that was wrongly specified in the application.xml

Same error occurred for me, but problem was in the application.xml not the web.xml, spec was inconsistent between application.xml and web.xml. Web 3.0, J2EE 1.4, should have been Java EE 6.