File -> Export
Web -> to .war
Choose the Source Project and Destination Folder
c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_23\bin> jar xf filename.war
java.io.IOException: META-INF : could not create directory at sun.tools.jar.Main.extractFile(Main.java:928) at sun.tools.jar.Main.extract(Main.java:852) at sun.tools.jar.Main.run(Main.java:242) at sun.tools.jar.Main.main(Main.java:1149)
This may be happening because jar.exe does not have permission to create a directory in the current folder (e.g. it is extracting to Program Files which is "admin only").
Copy jar.exe and jli.dll from the JDK binary folder into a place where you have write permissions, then run
jar -xf filename.war
Extracts META-INF and WEB-INF (.java source files included if you chose so in export)
ALTERNATIVELY: try the free 7zip to Open Archive (and or Extract)
Deploy your web applications statically to Tomcat, followed by a Tomcat startup
Host autoDeploy attribute = "true" mean the Host will attempt to deploy and update web applications dynamically, as needed.
e.g. a new .WAR is dropped into the appBase.
NOTE: the Host needs to have background processing enabled (which is the default)
tomcat 5.5 = /usr/local/tomcat/conf/server.xml
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-5.5-doc/config/host.html