How to use Tomcat 8.5.x and TomEE 7.x with Eclipse?

Question

I need to setup a Tomcat 8.5.x server version in Eclipse. When I try to create a server using Eclipse GUI, I get in Eclipse Luna as choice the latest version "Apache Tomcat v8.0". When I select it and I browse to my Tomcat 8.5.x server, I get this blocking error message:

The Apache Tomcat installation at this directory is version 8.5.0. A Tomcat 8.0 installation is expected.

The same error appears when trying TomEE 7.x, which is internally based on Tomcat 8.5.

In Eclipse Neon the latest version as choice is "Apache Tomcat v9.0" and it gives the same error. There isn't even a "Apache Tomcat v8.5" option.

Is there a way to use Tomcat 8.5 and TomEE 7.x in Eclipse? How?

Answer 1

You have to patch catalina.jar, as this is version number the WTP adapter looks at. It's a quite useless check, and the adapter should allow you to start the server anyway, but nobody has though of that yet.

For years and with every version of Tomcat this is always a problem.

To patch you can do the following:

• cd [tomcat or tomee home]/lib
• mkdir catalina
• cd catalina/
• unzip ../catalina.jar
• vim org/apache/catalina/util/ServerInfo.properties

Make sure it looks like the following (the version numbers all need to start with 8.0):

server.info=Apache Tomcat/8.0.0
server.number=8.0.0
server.built=May 11 2016 21:49:07 UTC

Then:

• jar uf ../catalina.jar org/apache/catalina/util/ServerInfo.properties
• cd ..
• rm -rf catalina