At the time, I was told this would be fixed in Tomcat 5 and to work around it in Tomcat 4.1.x, which I did.
Unfortunately, now that I've moved to Tomcat 5, I discover that the bug is still quite present. There is now a nice getURI() method along with the previous getURL() method. Unfortunately, getURLs() does not use getURI( file ).toURL() or any such as it would need to for the RMI runtime's sake (as it calls getURLs()).
I can clearly patch WebappClassLoader.getURLs() to make such calls myself, but:
1. I'm left wondering about the broader implications of doing just this.
* In Tomcat 4.1.x, I changed getURL() to do
canonicalFile.toURI().toURL() under Java 1.4 and a hand
coded equivalent in previous JVMs.
* This works quite robustly in my experience, but I'm left
wondering what the overall best, safest, and most performant
fix is.
2. I don't want to keep having to maintain my own fix. An overall
optimal fix should be integrated into Tomcat 5 so that this issue
ceases to be an issue for everyone using Tomcat.-- Jess Holle
