slevine

There are four different ways one can deploy a webapp to Tomcat.
If $TOMCAT_HOME is the Tomcat top-level directory:

• Copy the war file foo.war or exploded war directory to $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps
• Create a context file context.xml in the webapp’s META-INF/ directory that contains a fragment that describes the webapp deployment
• Add a <Context> element to the <Host> element in Tomcat’s server.xml that describes the webapp deployment, including docBase. docBase is a attribute that locates the war file or exploded war directory in the filesystem.
• Create a context file foo.xml in $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/foo.xml that contains a fragment that describes the webapp deployment, including docBase.

Sample $TOMCAT_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/foo.xml