I have been working on a Java web application and i am using SmartGwt on Netbeans 7.3 and out of a sudden I encountered this problem. I tried cleaning the
may its so late but the response useful for others so :
Sometimes, when you don't specify a server or servlet container at the
creation of the project, NetBeans fails to create a context.xml file.
META-INF. Do this by right mouse button clicking on Web pages, and select:
New->Other->Other->File Folder
Name the folder META-INF. Case is important, even on Windows.
context.xml in the META-INF folder. Do this by right mouse button clicking on the new META-INF folder, and
select:
New->Other->XML->XML Document
Name it context (NetBeans adds the .xml)
Select Well-formed Document
Press Finish
Edit the new document (context.xml), and add the following:
Replace app-name with the name of your application.
Now your in-place deployment should work. If not, make sure that the file can be read by everyone.
The context.xml file is specific to Tomcat. For more information about
that file, see the Tomcat documentation at tomcat.apache.org.