Deploying .class files to a symlink directory instead of /web-inf/classes (easy question?)

["Ennamorato, Andrew" <ae...@harris.com>]

Might be an easy one. 
We're installing Tomcat 5.0.28 and Axis 1.1 on several machines. We
usually set up an "operations" and "test" version at the same time. 
Typically, we'll install .html/.jsp/whatever files within the
/tomcat/classes directory, but that directory is just a symlink to
something like /usr/deployment/classes. I found that when I did this in
Axis1.1 I'd get "class not found" exceptions and the like. 

1) Can this be done? Can I put my services and .class files in
/usr/classes and just point /axis/WEB-INF/classes/myproject to that
area? Did I do something wrong before?
2) Is there another way to simulate this setup? Reason being that we
don't want to come along and upgrade Axis to 1.2 or Tomcat to 5.5.x and
wipe out our development code. 

I tried reading through old lists and didn't seem to find an answer. I'm
hoping it's something as simple as adding a classpath in the .wsdd file
or just that it's not possible. If that is the case it's okay, but
wanted to rule it out.

Fyi, we're installing on an SGI (not sure it matters). 

Thanks in advance,

Andy

Re: Deploying .class files to a symlink directory instead of /web-inf/classes (easy question?)

[Thom Hehl <he...@asset.com>]

For security purposes, tomcat doesn't ship with support for symlinks 
turned on. There is a setting that is something like follow-symlinks 
that you can enable.

I did that once, then it occurred to me that, rather than defeat the 
security, make the webapps sub-directory the main directory and symlink 
to it from your build area. That gets you the best of both worlds.

HTH.

Ennamorato, Andrew wrote:

> Might be an easy one.
> We're installing Tomcat 5.0.28 and Axis 1.1 on several machines. We 
> usually set up an "operations" and "test" version at the same time.
>
> Typically, we'll install .html/.jsp/whatever files within the 
> /tomcat/classes directory, but that directory is just a symlink to 
> something like /usr/deployment/classes. I found that when I did this 
> in Axis1.1 I'd get "class not found" exceptions and the like.
>
> 1) Can this be done? Can I put my services and .class files in 
> /usr/classes and just point /axis/WEB-INF/classes/myproject to that 
> area? Did I do something wrong before?
>
> 2) Is there another way to simulate this setup? Reason being that we 
> don't want to come along and upgrade Axis to 1.2 or Tomcat to 5.5.x 
> and wipe out our development code.
>
> I tried reading through old lists and didn't seem to find an answer. 
> I'm hoping it's something as simple as adding a classpath in the .wsdd 
> file or just that it's not possible. If that is the case it's okay, 
> but wanted to rule it out.
>
> Fyi, we're installing on an SGI (not sure it matters).
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Andy
>