How does Eclipse deploy Web Application using Tomcat

Question

How does Eclipse work internally with Apache (or Tomcat). Beacause it doesn't deploy our Web Application inside "webapps" directory of Tomcat. So how does it do it??

Solution 1

By default Eclipse deploys *.war files inside a internal webapps folder called wtpwebapps which is located in the following directory:

{Workspace_location}/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/wtpwebapps

This behaviour however is customizable using Server Locations option defined in server options panel accesible by double clicking the desired server from Servers view in Eclipse:

Solution 2

You can also select the second option. Then eclipse will deploy your app under the default "wtpwebapps" folder under tomcat directory.

Click here for more details on how to enable this setting