running packed WAR files with embedded tomcat

[John Cartwright - NOAA Federal]

Hello All,

I'm trying to create a very basic embeded tomcat 7 application to host a
packed WAR file.  My code looks like:

Tomcat tomcat = new Tomcat()
tomcat.setPort(port)
tomcat.setBaseDir(".")
tomcat.addWebapp(pathToWarFile, contextName)

It seems to work, but I'm getting an exception on startup complaining about
the missing webapps directory:

   SEVERE: Exception fixing docBase for context [/quickstart]
   java.io.IOException: Application base [{1}] for host
[/private/tmp/./webapps] does not exist or is not a directory.

Can someone please direct me to a better way to do this? Is
Tomcat#addWebapp not appropriate if hosting a packed WAR file?

Thanks!

--john