Tomcat autodeploy: war or exploded web application
February 14, 2010 23:00:53 Last update: February 16, 2010 03:20:24
Tomcat auto-deploys WAR files or exploded web applications copied to the
So the
Your application is automatically re-deployed when a new WAR file is copied to
It is possible to configure the Loader element to watch all class files in your web application and re-deploy the application when any class is updated. But that incurs significant overhead for any non-trivial application. It's probably far better to drop a new WAR, or simply touch
Please also note that redeployment may fail when you are copying a WAR file at the same time Tomcat is checking for updates - Tomcat seems not to know that the WAR is currently being copied.
appBase directory by default. The default Host configuration in server.xml looks like this:
<!-- Define the default virtual host Note: XML Schema validation will not work with Xerces 2.2. --> <Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true" xmlValidation="false" xmlNamespaceAware="false">
So the
appBase directory is named webapps by default, which is where the manager and examples applications are. You can deploy a new application by dropping your WAR file, or copying your application in exploded WAR structure to the same directory.
Your application is automatically re-deployed when a new WAR file is copied to
webapps, or, in exploded structure, WEB-INF/web.xml is updated. The reason that Tomcat knows to reload a web application when web.xml is updated is because of the WatchedResource declaration in $CATALINA_BASE/conf/context.xml:
<Context> <!-- Default set of monitored resources --> <WatchedResource>WEB-INF/web.xml</WatchedResource> <!-- Uncomment this to disable session persistence across Tomcat restarts --> <!-- <Manager pathname="" /> --> <!-- Uncomment this to enable Comet connection tacking (provides events on session expiration as well as webapp lifecycle) --> <!-- <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.CometConnectionManagerValve" /> --> </Context>
It is possible to configure the Loader element to watch all class files in your web application and re-deploy the application when any class is updated. But that incurs significant overhead for any non-trivial application. It's probably far better to drop a new WAR, or simply touch
WEB-INF/web.xml.
Please also note that redeployment may fail when you are copying a WAR file at the same time Tomcat is checking for updates - Tomcat seems not to know that the WAR is currently being copied.
