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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T17:56:51+00:00

Tomcat docs says that Normally, application classes should NOT be placed here: $CATALINA_BASE/lib .

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Tomcat docs says that “Normally, application classes should NOT be placed here: $CATALINA_BASE/lib“. I figured that app JARs that are shared between webapps should be placed instead some other place defined as shared.loader= in the catalina.properties.

Can someone shed some light on what is the difference between these two places (common and shared)? Doesn’t the common loader loads the classes from both place?

And what could possibly go wrong if do not set up a shared place but I put shared application JARs into $CATALINA_BASE/lib?

Thanks

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I wouldn’t put JARs in shared location at all if possible. If you do,

    • you cannot deploy a new version of the library via the normal deployment mechanism
    • you cannot deploy your application to a new server without installing the libraries beforehand
    • all applications have to agree on a common version of all libraries since you can only deploy a single version at any time

    You hardly ever save enough memory or disk space to compensate for these disadvantages.

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