A method, an apparatus, and computer instructions are provided for providing alternative installation structures for deployment of software applications. A set of requirements for software modules to be deployed are detected. Based on the hosting requirement, the present invention determines a set of candidate software modules by comparing the hosting requirements to capabilities of software modules in a software registry. Non-hosting requirements are cascaded for validation at a corresponding level. The present invention exposes software modules based on their supported requirement types and filters candidate hosting software modules based on options defined in the non-hosting requirements. Finally, a list of options with a list of candidate software modules is presented for user selection.