Question

While installing the new eclipse indigo IDE I’ve tried to setup the tomcat server previously downloaded from Apache web site (tomcat 7.0.20) with no success. When I fill the tomcat directory in the form it causes an error to appear saying the version I chosen is not valid. It also suggests to download the tomcat version 7.0.12. Why? Is there a way to use the latest version of tomcat with indigo eclipse? Is there a compatibility problem with version newer than 7.0.12?

I downloaded the windows 64bit version of tomcat 7.0.20, but using an old 7.0.16 I already had the result is the same.

Answer 1

I think the invalid version message is a bit misleading; it just doesn’t like something about the installation. Anyway, here’s what worked for me, using Ubuntu 11.10, eclipse Indigo JavaEE SR2, tomcat 7.0.21.

I have a standalone tomcat installation as per the standard ubuntu tomcat7 package. I used tomcat7-instance-create to create a separate tomcat instance for eclipse:

$ tomcat7-instance-create -p 8000 -c 8003 ~/dev/eclipse/tomcat

This required a few additions to keep eclipse happy

$ cd ~/dev/eclipse/tomcat
$ ln -s /usr/share/tomcat7/lib
$ ln -s /var/lib/tomcat7/conf/policy.d/03catalina.policy conf/catalina.policy
$ ln -s /usr/share/tomcat7/bin/bootstrap.jar bin/bootstrap.jar
$ ln -s /usr/share/tomcat7/bin/tomcat-juli.jar bin/tomcat-juli.jar
$ tree
.
├── bin
│   ├── bootstrap.jar -> /usr/share/tomcat7/bin/bootstrap.jar
│   ├── setenv.sh
│   ├── shutdown.sh
│   ├── startup.sh
│   └── tomcat-juli.jar -> /usr/share/tomcat7/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
├── conf
│   ├── catalina.policy -> /var/lib/tomcat7/conf/policy.d/03catalina.policy
│   ├── catalina.properties
│   ├── context.xml
│   ├── logging.properties
│   ├── server.xml
│   ├── tomcat-users.xml
│   └── web.xml
├── lib -> /usr/share/tomcat7/lib
├── logs
├── temp
├── webapps
└── work

Then just add a new runtime environment and server as normal, and it’s all good!

HTH,