That's a tough one.

The "spec" at https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/WFLY8/Admin+Guide#AdminGuide-DescriptionofanAttribute says:

alternatives – List of string – Indicates an exclusive relationship between attributes. If this attribute is defined, the other attributes listed in this descriptor's value should be undefined (even if their required descriptor says true; i.e. the presence of this attribute satisfies the requirement.) Default is undefined; i.e. this does not apply to most attributes.

So what I'm doing in this PR breaks that as a read-resource will return the same value for both attributes. I want that to be the behavior to avoid API breakage. But I agree it is contrary to the definition of 'alternatives' and I shouldn't blur that definition.

There really isn't any metadata that describes what I've done here. I think we need some formal 'alias' notion for attributes. Or something like that. ;)

Thanks for pointing this out. Getting things like this wrong leads to lots of future pain.