manual tomcat install versus apt

[Thierry Carrez]

Thufir wrote:
>> If the howto you refer to is [1] then it was written even before the
>> Tomcat 6 packages were added to Ubuntu. It details how to download a
>> Tomcat binary from the Apache website and manually deploy it under
>> Ubuntu.
>>
>> [1] http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/installing-tomcat-6-on-ubuntu/
> 
> Yes, this is the how-to I followed.  However, let's ask:  why is there 
> even such a how-to?  why wouldn't it just advise to use apt-get?

As I said, this howto was written before the Tomcat 6 packages were even
available. So the "manual install" was the only method there was. This
is the main reason why these howtos exist. It doesn't advise to install
from the repository because it was never updated.

> Which brings us back to:  what is it that's odd about the apt-get 
> install?  why doesn't it just do the bog standard manual install, but
> scripted?

Ubuntu packages are rebuilt from the sources, they can't just download
upstream binaries and unpack them. We also provide more system
integration (for example we don't run Tomcat as root, which is what your
howto does). Furthermore, Ubuntu packages try to stick as much as they
can to FHS guidelines. Unpacking everything in a single directory is not
the way we install applications. We try to put configuration in /etc,
logs in /var/log, etc. That makes the resulting package more
Ubuntu-integrated, but, I agree, a little more confusing for long-time
Tomcat users.

-- 
Thierry Carrez
Ubuntu server team