Deployment

The plugin provides various methods of deployment to Tomcat:

These are described in more detail below.

Deploying a WAR file

The simplest way to deploy a WAR project to Tomcat is to type:

mvn tomcat:deploy

This goal will assemble and deploy the WAR file to Tomcat's manager using HTTP PUT.

Using a different WAR file location

To specify a different WAR file location, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <warFile>path/to/my/warFile.war</warFile>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default location is ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.war.

Using a context.xml file

If you need to specify a context.xml file when deploying a WAR file to Tomcat, then it must be included within the WAR. The simplest way to achieve this is by adding it to your webapp resources:

src
|_ main
   |_ webapp
      |_ META-INF
         |_ context.xml

Deploying an exploded WAR directory

To avoid building a WAR file upon deployment, a WAR directory can instead be deployed to Tomcat by typing:

mvn war:exploded tomcat:exploded

Using a different WAR directory location

To specify a different WAR directory location, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <warDirectory>path/to/my/warDir</warDirectory>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default location is ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.

Using a context.xml file

To supply a context.xml when deploying a WAR directory, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <mode>both</mode>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default context.xml file use is located at src/main/webapp/META-INF/context.xml.

Using a different context.xml file location

To specify a different context.xml file location, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <contextFile>path/to/my/contextFile.xml</contextFile>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default location is ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}/META-INF/context.xml.

Deploying an in-place WAR directory

To avoid copying resources to the build directory, the webapp source directory can be deployed to Tomcat by typing:

mvn war:inplace tomcat:inplace

Using a different WAR directory location

To specify a different WAR directory location, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <warSourceDirectory>path/to/my/warSourceDir</warSourceDirectory>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default location is ${basedir}/src/main/webapp.

Using a context.xml file

To supply a context.xml when deploying a WAR directory to Tomcat, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <mode>both</mode>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default context.xml file used is located at src/main/webapp/META-INF/context.xml.

Using a different context.xml file location

To specify a different context.xml file location, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <contextFile>path/to/my/contextFile.xml</contextFile>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default location is ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}/META-INF/context.xml.

Deploying a context.xml file

To simply deploy just a context.xml file to Tomcat:

  1. Add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows: 
    <project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <mode>context</mode>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>
  2. Deploy the context.xml file by typing: 
    mvn tomcat:deploy

The default context.xml file used is located at src/main/webapp/META-INF/context.xml.

Using a different context.xml file location

To specify a different context.xml file location, add a plugin configuration block to your pom.xml as follows:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    ...
    <plugins>
      ...
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <configuration>
          <contextFile>path/to/my/contextFile.xml</contextFile>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
    ...
  </build>
  ...
</project>

The default location is ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}/META-INF/context.xml.

Running a WAR project

A WAR project can be run under an embedded Tomcat server by typing:

mvn tomcat:run

To stop the embedded server, press CTRL+C.