I am using jboss5.1.0GA.

Here is the issue:
I have a third party jar packaged in a manifest jar using relative path. After putting the manifest jar in server/lib, the server code (a custom startup class) can NOT find the classes in the third party jar.

/dev/jboss/server/default/lib/myjar.jar
/dev/team/third_party/jar1.jar

in myjar.jar manifest:
Class-Path: ../../../../team/third_party/jar1.jar

So I need to walk up the chain and then come down to another path for the library.

>cd /dev/jboss/server/default/lib
>ls ../../../../team/third_party/jar1.jar
-rw-r--r-- g900 55824 Oct 27 16:56 ../../../../team/third_party/jar1.jar

it verifies that the relative path for the jar is correct!

Now if I directly put the third party jar under server/lib, the classes are found during server startup and everything works fine!
/jboss/server/lib/jar1.jar

I need to use the manifest mechanism as there would be dozens of third party jars, defined in another dev location during install and I like to avoid the duplication by dumping all to the server lib directory.

Any insights on this issue?

Thanks,
jboss_ottawa