What you can do: Run your war project in an embeded Apache Tomcat within your Apache Maven build Deploy your war in a running Apache Tomcat instance Features recently implemented Questions
Mojo at Codehaus early 2006. For trademark issue move to Apache Tomcat umbrella in 2011. Now developpement at Apache with groupId change to org.apache.tomcat.maven and Mojos renamed to tomcat6 :* with support added of Tomcat7 tomcat7 :*
use mvn tomcat*:run to run your Apache Maven war project. No Apache Tomcat to install locally. Maven will download all necessary jars to run an embeded Tomcat. In Maven3 multi modules project, reactors projects automatically added to the webapp classloader : no need to install all jars dependencies. Easy developpement of webapp : no need of restart/install war when modifying jsp/css etc... Debug in your ide with mvnDebug.
Apache Maven project in a running Apache Tomcat instance. Attach the deploy goal to the deploy phase in a profile and your build war will be deploy in a running Tomcat instance. Simple : mvn deploy -Ptdeploy Run the Maven lifecycle (build your war, deploy it to your Repo Man and deploy it to your Tomcat instance)
a standalone jar to run your war. Jar will include your webapps and all necessary Tomcat jars. Cli : mvn tomcat7:exec-war produces a jar my-project-exec-war.jar Simply your project : jar -jar my-project-exec-war.jar Come with some default setup: http port, default server.xml But optionnal cli options : -httpPort -ajpPort etc.. (RTFM :-) )