I have been using my own code to build the jar file I use for spark submit. In 1.4 I could simply add all class and resource files I find in the class path to the jar and add all jars in the classpath into a directory called lib in the jar file. In 1.5 I see that resources and classes in jars in the lib directory are not being found and I am forced to add them at the top level. Has something changed recently in the structure of Spark jar files or how the class loader works. I find little documentation on the structure of a Spark jar used in spark-submit