I'm thinking about upgrading our tomcat from version 6.x to 8.5.x. Yeah, it's overdue. :-) In our test environment, I would like to install 8.5 in parallel with 6 for side-by-side comparison testing.
Having never done it before, I'm also thinking about splitting the tomcat and document locations with different values for CATALINA_HOME home CATALINA_BASE. So each tomcat instance, 6 and 8, would need its own copy of CATALINA_HOME. Running under Windows Server as a service, CATALINA_HOME would need to be somehow configured differently for each service. I assume that can be figured out somehow. Hints are welcome. ;-) My question is this. Is it even possible or simply not recommended for both tomcat instances to share the same CATALINA_BASE? The work folder with compiled cache is buried in CATALINA_HOME, not under webapps, right? It also assumes that no changes need to be made to the application code or web.xml to accommodate the newer tomcat version. If changes need to be made for the new version, then the whole issue becomes moot. Just in case you're curious why ... I'm a developer. :-) -- Cris Berneburg CACI Lead Software Engineer
