Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition) General Discussion

I've got a jar file in my tomcats common/lib that contains common functions used by numerous webapps in different contexts. This arrangements works perfectly.

However, occasionally, I want to deploy customized versions of the classes in my common/lib jar, with web app specific ones, however....

Believing that deploying jar files with the same classes, in the same packages, into both the webapps folder and the lib folder would cause problems, I deliberately changed the package names of the files going to the webapps folder.. Unfortunately, because my code does not reference the classes by full package name, when I deploy the jar file into the web apps lib folder, its still picking up the classes with the same names, but different packages from the common/lib folder.

The only way I have been able to get around this is by renaming the actual class files too.
Am I doing something wrong ?