Tomcat: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Obtaining the Source

Because Tomcat is a moving target—each release changes slightly, and point releases happen fairly frequently—this is only a general description of the build process.

Downloading Source Code

If you want a simpler start, you can get a release source TAR of Tomcat 6.0 from the Apache Tomcat 6 archives directory at http://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-6/. Choose a release, navigate into that release's src/ directory, and download the compressed archive of the source code. It comes in either tar.gz or .zip format. Download one of those archives and unpack it in a directory where you want to build it.

Obtaining Source Code from Apache's Subversion Repository

If you are very brave and like to live on the edge, you can update your source tree periodically between point releases and help the Tomcat development team test out new features that are in development. To do this, you must use the Subversion source code control system; see Version Control with Subversion by Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, and C. Michael Pilato (O'Reilly) for details.

Tip

If you don't have Subversion installed, you can get it from http://subversion.tigris.org. As is Tomcat, Subversion is open source software; anybody can use it without having to pay a fee for it, and the source code is available to everyone.

Before you pull a copy of the source, you must choose a version of Tomcat. In Tomcat's three-value version numbering (example: 6.1.28), 6 is a major version number, and the