Context Deployer This deployer scans a designated directory by setConfigurationDir(String) for the appearance/disappearance or changes to xml configuration files. The scan is performed at startup and at an optional hot deployment frequency specified by setScanInterval(int). By default, the scanning is NOT recursive, but can be made so by setRecursive(boolean). Each configuration file is in XmlConfiguration format and represents the configuration of a instance of ContextHandler (or a subclass specified by the XML Configure element). The xml should configure the context and the instance is deployed to the ContextHandlerCollection specified by setContexts(Server). Similarly, when one of these existing files is removed, the corresponding context is undeployed; when one of these files is changed, the corresponding context is undeployed, the (changed) xml config file reapplied to it, and then (re)deployed. Note that the context itself is NOT copied into the hot deploy directory. The webapp directory or war file can exist anywhere. It is the xml config file that points to it's location and deploys it from there. It means, for example, that you can keep a "read-only" copy of your webapp somewhere, and apply different configurations to it simply by dropping different xml configuration files into the configuration directory.