Is it possible to store all jars in Tomcat lib folder?

Question

We have a few projects and we store libs in project folders (each project has it's own libs) and we store shared libs in tomcat lib folder:

 ·Project1\lib
 ·Project2\lib
 ·…
 ·Tomcat\lib

Our manager proposed to combine all libs and put all jars in Tomcat lib folder.

Advantages of this approach are the following:

1. It will decrease compile time to .war file

2. It will decrease size of .war file

I feel that this decision is not the best one the but I can't prove it. Is there any disadvantages of this approach?

Answer 1

The resultant .war application file is less portable. Additional installation steps since the webapp is no longer self-contained.

Or to argue against your boss' logic.

1. Compiling should be automated in continuous integration, so time spent is not real person time
2. Space is cheap

Answer 2

Don't consolidate. Consolidation will prevent different projects from using different versions of a particular 3rd party library. This is why different webapps are isolated from each other.

Some libraries also store things statically ( sigh ), which can cause cross-webapp pollution.