Tomcat throws ClassNotFound exceptions for classes in other open eclipse projects

I have an eclipse project structure that looks something like this:

eclipse
    project a
    project b

All of these projects are Maven projects. Project B is an Eclipse WTP project and contains Project A as a dependency. I'm using the m2eclipse plugin.

When I deploy Project B to Tomcat (all from within Eclipse) it always throws errors saying that it can't find classes from Project A. The only way I can resolve this is to close Project A in Eclipse and do a mvn install command, so at this point Project A is treated like any other dependency.

I would like to not have to keep reopening and then closing Project A every time I make changes to it (which is pretty frequently at this stage).

I have tried adding Project A to Project B's Build Path, however that doesn't seem to do the trick. Again, it only works if I close the project in eclipse so it's treated like a normal maven dependency.

FYI I'm using the Helios version of Eclipse. Project B is a Spring project, so naturally Tomcat falls over when it imports all the beans etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks a lot.

The reason that tomcat cannot find your classes is that the project dependency in eclipse is not seen by tomcat. To resolve the issue you can add the bin folder of project a to the tomcat classpath of the app running from project b.

Jalkin

What you need to do is this:

In Eclipse go to Window > Show View > Servers > and open tab called Servers
In Servers, double click the server you want
This action should open a window entitled Overview, with your selected Server in the TAB
In this window select: Open launch configuration, and click the link.
In the Edit Configuration window, select the tab called Classpath
In the ClassPath textbox, select the line: User Entries
Now push the button on the right entitled: Add Projects
In the resulting Project Selection window select the external project you want the server to find via click.
Close these windows by clicking Apply then OK as appropriate as you work up the stack
Restart your server in the Overview window

You should be ready to go. It's actually only a 2 minute exercise. Good luck

If you go to the project properties, pick the item "Deployment Assembly", click "Add..." and choose "Project", you can add the dependent project and the issue should be solved.

Right click on the web project which is added to container server and select Maven and then select Disable Workspace Resolution. Then your dependency project will start appearing as a jar like any other dependencies.