Linux RPM package volunteer

["Williams, Murray Todd" <mu...@merck.com>]

I don't see any sign of Tomcat RPMs for Linux, so unless someone points some
out, I'm willing to volunteer to make some.  Currently I've built RPMS for
the XML Apache tools (Xerces-J, Xalan-J, FOP, Cocoon) that layer on top of
the "official" ApacheJServ RPMs.  I'm thinking of first constructing a
Tomcat RPM and then modifying my other RPMs so that they will intelligently
configure themselves for either JServ or Tomcat depending on which system
(RPM package) is installed.

I suspect this might do a world of good to address all the newbie e-mails
from people who are just trying to get their first crack at a "Hello World"
working. (At least on Linux.)

My only problem is this: I haven't done much with Tomcat (got it installed
once off of /usr/local) and I have very little idea what an "ideal generic
configuration" would look like.  I can see that Tomcat is very "root
directory" oriented (as opposed to easily allowing a user to put a config
file anywhere (/etc/httpd/conf/jserv for example), class files anywhere,
etc.  Thus I'm guessing either everything needs to be put under /opt/tomcat
or /home/httpd/tomcat or something like that.

PLEASE, I'd like to invite any opinions or recommendations so I can do this
right the first time.  I don't need any newbie-style handholding, just some
good basic configuration recommendations.

(And by all means, if someone else has already done an RPM, let me know.)

Cheers!

Murray Todd Williams