Tomcat by SW

Thanks for the feedback! Our thoughts... 1) First of all, the Web site doesn't give enough information about what the installer installs. A) If you're looking for Tomcat, you already know what it does. Otherwise, read the Read Me included in the DMG for additional info, like what components are included (also in the installer screens), and where you can get more info on Tomcat 2) I see you've added Ant, which some might find useful, but not me. I use Eclipse, so I don't need to worry about Ant. Is this component optional? If not, it really should be. A) Some folks NEED Ant. All components are optional; if you run the installer you can click "customize", just like most apps 3) Do you install mod_jk? This would be a big help for people who want to use Tomcat with Apache. If so, how do you deal with modifying httpd.conf? Is this scripted, or do you just have a readme that says "paste this into your httpd.conf file"? A) No; just Tomcat for now, since I don't want to enter the debacle of Apache/Tomcat combos; Tomcat does just fine by itself 4) Do you include any sample apps to test database installations and demonstrate how to connect? I think this would be really useful. I know there are a lot of options available, but just covering MySQL and PostgreSQL on localhost would probably satisfy at least 80% of your audience. 5) If you tried using the Tomcat admin screens, you can set DB connections up yourself. And yes, some sample scripts/apps are included with the base install of Tomcat. You could try reading the docs of going to the website named in the installer and Read Me. As for database connectivity....we'll consider it in the future, though the foundation is already there (and easy to use!) 6) You might also want to consider writing an installer or setup script for JBoss. Having just installed it myself and going up the learning curve to get my first couple of J2EE apps running, I think you could save people a lot of time and trouble. A) There's still a lot of components to work on; JBoss is interesting...we'll consider it in the future 7) On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if people who can't figure these things out for themselves have any business running servers on their Macs. I'm torn between the idea of making things easier for those people and simply trying to educate them about how to do things for themselves. A) Education is good, no doubt about it. However, some people like an easy installer to get them going :) Of course, we'd consider a lot more improvements, but this is a donation-ware project. The fewer donations there are, the fewer resources we can dedicate to it.

Also...when its listed in MacUpdate...it lists as: "Tomcat by SW 1.2 - Jakarta Tomcat installer" So it is actually listed (as "Jakarta Tomcat"...not "SW Tomcat) before you can even download it. We'll still consider a rename in the far future though Thanks, SW

yes .. you can find all you need at http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/ but Tomcat by SW 2.0.1 performs the installation so easily... (the Mac way... click on the package..)

it's an Application Server.... like WebSphere, Weblogic, JBoss or WebObjects or many others..... You can run it with Apache as a WebServer and MySql as a Database server.... and all you need is free (and love)