We have a debate going on .

a. The "standard" way of assembling a web app. Create a WAR with all our app artifacts and all other components like hibernate and memcached etc are deployed in the tomcat/shared/lib area.

b. Create a humongous war with everything included and nothing in tomcat/shared/lib.

Pros for a - It keeps things modular and the war is small. Cons for a - dependency on shared/lib has to be managed especially by the deployment process.

Pros for b - All dependencies are controlled by the build process removing any room for error. Cons for b - War is really, really big. If you are deploying over a network to a huge farm, then it might have an impact.

want to see what thoughts others might have about this.