Where is the compiled webapp when running a web application through Intellij IDEA?

Question

I am building a web application using Intellij IDEA. I use Tomcat run configuration in IDEA to run the webapp.

What is the location of the compiled webapp which gets pointed to tomcat? How does IDEA point out tomcat where the compiled webapp is? (The .war file or extracted directory inside webapps directory in tomcat installation doesn't change when I do changes and run).

Tomcat prints the environment variables it uses at startup ( CATALINA_BASE , CATALINA_HOME etc.). But none of those locations contained the compiled webapp.

Answer 1

You have to specify the artifacts you want to the deploy to Tomcat in the Deployment tab, which is located in your Tomcat Server configuration.

From the IntelliJ help:

Deployment tab

Use this tab to specify which artifacts and/or external resources should be deployed onto the server. (An external resource means a deployable Web component such as a .war file which is not represented by a project artifact. Usually, such components are stored outside of the project scope.)