Just to add my 2 cents (late to this discussion as I just subscribed). I prefer not to add Arquillian to the TCK. It would add unnecessary dependency and burden with limited gains.
For developers new to batch, it adds extra barriers to force them to learn Arq annotations and api. To help them try out new tests, I think the best way is to provide some hello-world style sample batch app (in both standalone, and EE apps), so that they can quickly add a few lines and get running. This is what we have been doing in project jberet with
jberet-simple,
numbers-chunk &
jberet-wildfly-samples.
Adding Arq makes batch app specific to the running environment, and makes it hard to share the app with others who are not using or not familiar with Arq. We all spend a huge amount of time debugging tests and running apps, probably more than the time spent on writing apps and tests. Arq is yet another variable when it comes to debugging with its own annotation, api, configuration and other quirks. Arq does help with developer productivity when writing tests, but that will be offsetted when comes debugging time.
Cheng
