Eclipse + Tomcat - Serve webapp directly from workspace

Question

What is the ideal way to configure Tomcat to serve directly from my project\'s directory inside of my workspace? (related)

I want my static web resources

Answer 1

It's unclear if you are using the Eclipse WTP approach with Tomcat or some custom deployment strategy.

I switched away from running Tomcat in Eclipse because of unreliable re-publishing of changed JARs. I'm now using Jetty via the Run Jetty Run Eclipse plug-in (available in the Eclipse Marketplace). This appears to run from the workspace and does not do the republish-to-a-deployment-directory approach that Eclipse uses with Tomcat.

You don't get dynamic code reload with this option, but you can add that feature back with JRebel.

Going further left-field, switch to a JVM language/framework that supports seeing your changes instantly without re-publishing/restarting such as:

• Play 2 (Scala and Java)
• Grails (Groovy)
• Vert.X (various JVM languages).