Unfortunately, right now, starting tomcat in eclipse won't start the ssl server. I'm still working on configuring the server so it will work in eclipse, however, ssl will work if you start tomcat from the command line. The problem has something to do with relative paths. - mmoretti

Here are the steps:

  1. Make sure you've installed the Web Standard Tools (WST) and Java Standard Tools (JST) plugins
    1. TBD doc this
  2. Make sure you have a jdk 1.5 runtime configured in eclipse
    1. Window > Preferences > Java > Installed JREs
    2. Make sure it is a jdk, not a jre or tomcat can't compile jsps
    3. Make sure it is also selected as a jdk execution environment, Installed JREs > Execution Environment
  3. Show the Servers view, Window > Show View > Other > Servers
  4. Check out the preconfigured tomcat from the tools dir in svn
  5. Add the Tomcat server:
    1. Right click in the Servers window and select New > Server
    2. Apache > Tomcat 5.5, Next
    3. Tomcat Installation Directory - Browse to where you checked out tomcat from svn
    4. JRE - select the 1.5 jdk
    5. Finish

Now to get projects to deploy to the tomcat whenever you build:

  1. Right click the Tomcat 5.5 server > Add and Remove Projects
  2. Select the projects you want to deploy and click Add, then Finish

Before you can actually deploy an app or run it, you will need to start the tomcat server:

  1. Right click the Tomcat 5.5 server > Start

The url for your tomcat is:

Any app you deploy will be at both of those urls under the context root of the app, e.g.: