In order to avoid restarting Tomcat every time you do code changes and re-compiling, add the context tag in the Tomcat conf/server.xml file.

The Context element represents a web application.

docBase: The Document Base (also known as the Context Root) directory for this web application, or the pathname to the web application archive file (WAR).

path: The context path of this web application, which is matched against the beginning of each request URI to select the appropriate web application for processing.

crossContext: Set to true if you want calls within this application to ServletContext.getContext() to successfully return a request dispatcher for other web applications running on this virtual host.

reloadable: Set to true if you want Catalina to monitor classes in /WEB-INF/classes/ and /WEB-INF/lib for changes, and automatically reload the web application if a change is detected. This feature is very useful during application development, but it requires significant runtime overhead and is not recommended for use on deployed production applications.