about packaging app in Java

[david wolf]

I have a big project that I need to put serveral context, say multiple
dirs, under catalina.home/webapps/. My problem is that there are
several dirs under webapps that all depend on classes under one
particular dir. In this case, I think one possible soulition is that
put that dir(actually the class dir) in CLASSPATH, thus all other dirs
needing these classes can find them. Another soulition, I think it is
to put these classes to ../shared/classes dir. Thus elimilate the need
for setup CLASSPATH environment. But for this case, how to package my
projects? I mean for the stuffs I need to put shared/classes, in which
jar file should I package them?

Thanks,

David