Why does tomcat replace context.xml on redeploy?

deployment tomcat tomcat6
artemb picture artemb · Oct 27, 2010 · Viewed 12.2k times · Source

Documentation says if you have a context file here:

$CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/myapp.xml

it will NOT be replaced by a context file here:

mywebapp.war/META-INF/context.xml

It is written here: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/context.html

Only if a context file does not exist for the application in the $CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/, in an individual file at /META-INF/context.xml inside the application files.

But everytime I re-deploy the war it replaces this myapp.xml with the /META-INF/context.xml!

Why does it do it and how can I avoid it?

Thanx

Answer

petro picture petro · Dec 12, 2011

Undeploy part of redeploy deletes app and the associated context.xml.

If you use maven tomcat plugin you can avoid deleting context.xml if you deploy your app with command like this:

mvn tomcat:deploy-only -Dmaven.tomcat.update=true

More info here: https://tomcat.apache.org/maven-plugin-2.0-beta-1/tomcat7-maven-plugin/deploy-only-mojo.html

You can use deploy-only with parameter mode to deploy the context.xml too.

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