title: jar files in Tomcat 7 lib directory
body: <p>I am wondering about the following: I have a Tomcat 7 dedicated to a single webapp. Is there a point in putting any jar inside the $TOMCAT_HOME/lib directory? In the <a href="http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/class-loader-howto.html" rel="nofollow">documentation</a> it says:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>Therefore, from the perspective of a web application, class or resource loading looks in the following repositories, in this order:</p>
    
    <ul>
    <li>Bootstrap classes of your JVM</li>
    <li>System class loader classes (described above)</li>
    <li>/WEB-INF/classes of your web application</li>
    <li>/WEB-INF/lib/*.jar of your web application</li>
    <li>Common class loader classes (described above)</li>
    </ul>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>So, if I am reading this correctly, there is no reason I should put avtivemq or commons-dbcp. I can instead place them in my webapps lib folder and be absolutely certain that they will be picked up first. If that's so, is there any other scenario that would make sense for me to use the $TOMCAT_HOME/lib directory? If not, could you please explain where is the above flawed?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,</p>
  
  <p>G.</p>