Dynamically loading a class that is part of a larger loaded package

Question

I am dynamically loading a class that is part of a large package, much of which is loaded at startup. The code directly references protected variables in the parts of the package that is loaded by the default class loader. Attempting to access these protected variables gives an access error when the class is dynamically loaded that doesnt occur when the class is loaded at startup.
Is there a way to make this work?

Answer 1

To answer my own question -- no
A reference from http://access1.sun.com/techarticles/DR-article.html says:
The use of Dynamic Class Reloading can introduce problems when classes that are being dynamically reloaded make calls to non-public methods of helper classes that are in the same package. Such calls are likely to cause a java.lang.IllegalAccesserror to be thrown. This is because a class that is dynamically reloaded is loaded by a different classloader than the one used to load the helper classes. Classes that appear to be in the same package are effectively in different packages when loaded by different classloaders. If class com.myapp.MyServlet is loaded by one classloader and an instance of it tries to call a non-public method of an instance of class com.myapp.Helper loaded by a different classloader, the call will fail because the two classes are in different packages.
So not being able to access non-private variables in this scenario is the way it works.