Is there a good way to use an external directory as a web app from within an exploded .ear file? I have my JSPs alongside my Java sources in a directory tree that's under source control, and ideally I'd like to be able to edit my JSPs there and have the server recompile them. Right now I have to copy them into a .war subdirectory in my exploded .ear, which is an annoying extra step during development.
I've tried putting a full file: URL in the web-uri element of my application.xml file, but that just gets treated as a subdirectory called "file:". (Yeah, I know, it's a URI and not a URL, but I had to try it.)
On my UNIX development system, I can just use a symbolic link, but I also have to spend time developing on Windows where there are no symbolic links, so if it's possible to do this with a configuration directive that'd be preferable.
Cygwin takes an interesting approach to the problem: it treats Windows shortcuts as symbolic links. I suppose there's little hope of JBoss/Tomcat doing the same, though.
I'm using 3.2.2.
