Let's discuss this for a moment.
The build process for Castor simply loads everything found in the lib directory into the classpath. I've tried making the cocoon build process match, and I found that I like what I see. Now I would like to suggest that we make the ant build process match. It makes adding something to your classpath is as easy as copying/linking a jar into the $ANT_HOME/lib directory. Removing something is just as easy. The reason why I'm bringing this up in response to your post is that this conflicts with your suggestion. Thinking about this, the issue is that the build.xml chooses to place this one file (ant.jar) into a special place; all other build outputs are placed into a separate build directory. My preference is that this be changed - and have everything placed in the build directory. If users want to actually run from this, that should be a separate, overt, install step. Thoughts? - Sam Ruby
