Agree about not using Castor for the blocks framework. On the same time it would be better to have a common model, but I don't know how to best achieve that.>> Yes, I was also thinking about this. The best (or even better) alternative istXMLBeans but that's also far from being light-weight. ... and JAXB20 requires Java5.
Maybe jibx (http://jibx.sf.net) cuould fit to your need, it does not have many dependencuies.
And maybe there is so little in common for the needs in the blocks fw and the deployer so that it isn't worthwhile.
