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

I suggest using sbt together with its web plugin.

The key feature of sbt is the continuous integration mode: This basically means, sbt fires a command, if a file changes.

So normal sbt commands (related with the web plugin) are

container:start
container:stop
container:reload / ... container:reload

but using it in the continuous integration mode (a command starting with ~)

~;container:start; container:reload /

it will automatically reload a web application when source code or any other files have changed.

So I just save servlets, Java sources, Scala sources whatever, and hit reload in the browser, and that really saves a lot of time.

This is the Grails feeling, but with Java as the main programming language.

Additional information

• I have sbt running in a terminal (I am not aware if there is a plugin for Eclipse to start it from within Eclipse)
• sbt can compile both Java and Scala projects out of the box.
• The web plugin is using jetty (I am not aware if it's possible to embed tomcat as well)
• There is no need to know Scala to configure sbt, but you should read the tutorial.
• This solution is not tied to the IDE; so it works without an IDE as well (just from the command line).