The convenience of putting your jars in lib/ext is great. But does that mean we should?
From jdom.org:
You need to ensure that the xerces.jar file supplied with the JDOM download is in your classpath before any other XML classes, such as those that come with JAXP or Crimson
So in this case, it seems that you can't just place the jars in lib/ext, instead you must rely on your CLASSPATH so that you can enforce the order by which the jars are loaded.
I'd like to know if anyone has any thoughts on using lib/ext. Should we freely use it for any jars (except, of course, xerces.jar if using jdom)? Or should it just be reserved for "core" extensions from Sun, such as activation.jar, mail.jar, etc? Is there a convention/standard for when to use it?