Having to restart tomcat whenever you make a change

Question

Is there a way around having to restart tomcat every time a small change is made in java code?

Answer 1

You don't have to restart Tomcat, just re-deploy the application. There are different ways to do that (google "tomcat deploy" and you'll get a lot of pointers) but the simplest is to copy the newly created war file into Tomcat's webapps directory. Tomcat will automatically detect when the file is updated, and re-start the application.

Answer 2

Check out Jrebel. It detects the code changes, compiles and deploys the war automatically, without having to restart the server. It saves a lot of time and improves the productivity.