The tomcat-ear utility enables deployment of Java© Enterprise Archives (EAR files) into a Tomcat servlet container. It does so by reading the Application Deployment Descriptor inside the EAR file (application.xml) and then deploying the contained files into the Tomcat instance in the following way:

• JARs (libraries, EJB modules and application client modules) are deployed into one of Tomcat's shared classloaders
• WARs are deployed as ordinary servlet applications
• RARs are not supported

This does not enable Tomcat to be used as a full-fledged Java EE server! It does however enable one specific use-case: the deployment of a service application implementing shared interfaces for other servlet applications on the same server.

• library JARs are only added if the application.xml contains a library-directory element.

• Python 2.6
• Maven 3
• Tomcat 6 or 7

1. clone this repository
2. add bin/ to your $PATH

1. set the environment variable $CATALINA_HOME, it should point to your tomcat directory
2. (optional, but recommended) create a new instance for tomcat and set the $CATALINA_BASE environment variable
3. execute tomcat-ear with an EAR file as it's argument

tomcat-ear will use the aforementioned environment variables to learn about where and how the EAR should be deployed.

• An example of how to setup Maven for building an EAR is included in the test/examples/ directory.
• You can modify the target directory for the deployment of WEB modules by setting the environment variable $CATALINA_DEPLOY.

Everything contained inside this directory and it's subdirectories is subject to the New BSD License.