I recently ran into this issue as well and here is what I found, (This is all from Tomcat 7 trunk)
If left as blank, the "common" loader will be used as Catalina's "shared"/"server" loader.
Here is the relevant source,
89 private void initClassLoaders() {
90 try {
91 commonLoader = createClassLoader("common", null);
92 if( commonLoader == null ) {
93 // no config file, default to this loader - we might be in a 'single' env.
94 commonLoader=this.getClass().getClassLoader();
95 }
96 catalinaLoader = createClassLoader("server", commonLoader);
97 sharedLoader = createClassLoader("shared", commonLoader);
98 } catch (Throwable t) {
99 handleThrowable(t);
100 log.error("Class loader creation threw exception", t);
101 System.exit(1);
102 }
103 }
106 private ClassLoader createClassLoader(String name, ClassLoader parent)
107 throws Exception {
108
109 String value = CatalinaProperties.getProperty(name + ".loader");
110 if ((value == null) || (value.equals("")))
111 return parent;
So if nothing is defined, they fallback to using the common.loader entries.
As to the order that they are loaded in,
here is the source for loading them in, from source
229 Thread.currentThread().setContextClassLoader(catalinaLoader);
230
231 SecurityClassLoad.securityClassLoad(catalinaLoader);
232
233 // Load our startup class and call its process() method
234 if (log.isDebugEnabled())
235 log.debug("Loading startup class");
236 Class<?> startupClass =
237 catalinaLoader.loadClass
238 ("org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina");
239 Object startupInstance = startupClass.newInstance();
240
241 // Set the shared extensions class loader
242 if (log.isDebugEnabled())
243 log.debug("Setting startup class properties");
244 String methodName = "setParentClassLoader";
245 Class<?> paramTypes[] = new Class[1];
246 paramTypes[0] = Class.forName("java.lang.ClassLoader");
247 Object paramValues[] = new Object[1];
248 paramValues[0] = sharedLoader;
249 Method method =
250 startupInstance.getClass().getMethod(methodName, paramTypes);
251 method.invoke(startupInstance, paramValues);
Line 229 sets the common.loader classLoader, then line 251 sets the shared.loader classloader is set as Catalinas parent class loader.