Although eclipse has a system to deploy applications to the application server of our choice (Tomcat, jboss, Web Sphere, etc.) I think that the system it uses is extremely slow. Other solutions that have appeared (jrebel (commercial), and others are depicted here, here, here and here) involve in some way keeping a synchronization of files between the deployed application and the developed application.

I humbly think that there is a better solution, cheaper and faster: it consists on a proper selection of the configuration of your project in eclipse and using a symbolic link to the deployment directory of the app server: this way, every change in your source code is reflected automatically in the deployment directory (because in fact both are the same directory) and saving a lot of computer time.

Let's go over the details of the process for Linux and Windows.

For the rest of this article, I will assume that we are working in an JSF eclipse project called “MyTest”. This solution works for every web project: jsp's, jsf, struts, whatever. The solution is very simple as you will see.

I've started with a project with a default configuration:

This directory has to be web/WEB-INF/classes, so that the directory WebContent can be equal as a complete deployed application.

So, right-click on MyTest → properties → Java Build Path and configure the directory so that the binaries are left in the WEB-INF directory: