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["Jockel, Jeff" <jj...@rational.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Holscher, David M [mailto:David.Holscher@NAV-INTERNATIONAL.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 7:51 AM
To: 'tomcat-user@jakarta.apache.org'
Subject: RE: Moving /WEB-INF/lib or adding to it in TC 4.0


> 
> Holscher, David M at David.Holscher@NAV-INTERNATIONAL.com wrote:
> >>
> >> You're relying on a platform specific feature that is *not* in the
> >> spec.
> >
> > Putting stuff in the $CATALINA_HOME\lib directory relies on stuff that
> is
> > not in the spec. Yet there is provision for that.
> 
> Correct, that's why it's not advisable to put it there. $CATALINA_HOME/lib
> is there just because sometimes you want to have libraries accessible by
> all
> your web applications WITHOUT putting them in $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/ext.

Yes, there are lots of things that are not advisable. I'm just saying that
having a way to extend the places where I look for jar files for a web-app
is no worse than existence of the $CATALINA_HOME/lib. 

> Also that location is not "specified" but merely a behavior of the Sun JDK
> (that had been inherited by most of the others, but not _all_ :)
> 
> >> Also, doesn't relying on this violate your first statement about
> "wouldn't
> >> ship a web app that relies on anything outside the war file"?
> >
> > My original question was removed from your reply but if you go back a
> > re-read it, I said I wanted to do it in my current development
> environment.
> > We I release code to production it is in a self-contained war file.
> 
> Yes, but at this point I don't quite get WHY you have to have a JAR file
> specifically tied to a single Web Application in a directory != from your
> WEB-INF/lib... It there a solid explanation on why you need this behavior?
> 
>     Pier

We have a set of jar files used by several programs which are not web
applications. We have a single web app which uses some of the jar files. It
does not make sense for the programs that are not web applications to use
jar files in the WEB-INF/lib directory nor does it make sense for the web
application to use files outside that directory. So when we build a
production release we make sure we have copies of the jar files in the right
places. However, in development when I make a change to a source file there
is much less pain involved if I don't have to make sure to copy the
resulting change to the jar file into all of the places it is needed. It is
simply easier to point the applications that need it to the central
location. Please don't answer that I should have the build script make extra
copies of the jar files (which will cause configuration management issues)
and please don't answer that the central location be the WEB-INF/lib
directory because most of our developers don't see that directory. I simply
want to know if it is possible to extend the library path for a web
application. At this point, I'm sure the answer is no.

Dave Holscher