This thread (... Tomcat ...) emphasizes the essential conundrom of CentOS whose mission is to provide a community-based, well-maintained and freely distributable version of the stable enterprise software from the Well Known North American VENDOR (WKNAV). There is a essential gap betweenthe community (I want lots of current packages) and the WKNAV base (you get what I choose to provide). As CentOS becomes more popular and reaches more desktop and server users, the gap becomes more evident. And there is also the ever present clamor for software that is not freely distributable due to licensing considerations.
What I would recommend to assist those who love the CentOS stable base but want more than CentOS can (legally or otherwise) provide is to follow the documentation approach taken by Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on the Well Known GNU/Linux Provider (KKGLP) but goes well beyond what the WKGLP chooses to privide. The community of Ubuntu has provided a single document with brief HOWTOs and website references for a lot of commonly needed services that are not provided by Ubuntu or the WKGLP. Granted this document (based on Ubuntu 5.04) but not really updated for Ubunto 5.10) is rapidly aging, but it is an example of what could be a very valuable service. Ubunto also provides a well-organized list of HOWTOs on its forums. This is the place for services like Tomcat which have non-redistributable components. It's perfectly legal to provide concise, up-to-date HOWTOs for software that cannot be redistributed.
Perhaps someone (or a group of someones) would like to take on organizing such a compendium of instructions on the CentOS Forum and keeping the compendium up to date? Think how many hours of googling and searching mail archives and copious RTFM could be saved! Instead of firing off a mail to this list, you could first look in a well known place on the Forum and avoid recasting a round object.
I'm not in a position to undertake such an endeavor. I keep current with CentOS, and I want to see CentOS thrive, but I have only a peripheral interest in CentOS, and that peripheral interst is a work connection. My employer, like many others, prefers to have a contractural arrangement (who can I kick around if it breaks even though it never breaks?) and to pay big bucks to the WKNAV for that privilege. CentOS is the closest thing I can get for my home system without paying the WKNAV, and this I will not do.
Some food for thought.
-- Collins Richey Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code ... If you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -Brian Kernighan