Eclipse plug-in for Tomcat

[Joseph Marques]

I'm running:

Eclipse 3.1
Tomcat 5.5.9
MySql 4.1

I've downloaded the eclipse plug-in for Tomcat (tomcatPluginV31beta.zip) from http://www.sysdeo.com/eclipse/tomcatplugin. I've installed it, and so far it's working pretty well, but I have a few questions.

As I understand it, this plug-in allows me to use my workspaces in eclipse to perform automated deployment to the Tomcat server. I did this so that I would not have to export the webapp as a WAR and install it in the server every time I made a code change. But how specifically does it work?

Here are my assumptions (correct me if I'm wrong):
<CATALINA_HOME>/webapps - contains apps that are currently installed
<CATALINA_HOME>/work/Catalina/localhost contains running/installed webapps

So does the plug-in then make the following substitutions?
workspace/<proj> - <CATALINA_HOME>/webapps/<proj>
workspace/<proj>/work - <CATALINA_HOME>/work/Catalina/localhost/<proj>

Also, there is the <CATALINA_HOME>/conf/Catalina/localhost directory to contend with. Normally, I would include a file called <proj>.xml in there, which configures the <proj> application. I've heard about a file in the eclipse workspace - META-INf/context.xml. Does the plug-in take this context.xml file, move it to the conf directory, and rename it <proj>.xml?

Thanks in advance,
-joe