I am a Linux user and love linking things to reduce copies. Apache/Tomcat (by default) does not allow symbolic linking (nice as it can cross mounted file systems) except in the top apache/lib directory. I use hard links in the Application/WEB-INF/lib directories to reduce copying and help me manage things.
HOWEVER, some applications have special needs - e.g. pictures. You don't want to always distribute these with the release of the application (Application.war file), so symbolic links are the way to go (except for MS land, sorry). The nice solution to this is: .../webapps/Application/WEB-INF/context.xml which must contain at least the two below lines: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Context allowLinking="true"> </Context> However this allows ALL symbolic linking in the Application directory. I agree with the developers that this is dangerous. Is there some way to allow linking in just ONE sub-directory of the Application?? - e.g. .../webapps/Application/images This would allow all I need to have local images for the application without endangering other things using a symbolic link.
