This can be really annoying. You want to develop 'rapidly': so you use 'apt-get install tomcat'. You can begin working on your applications right away and then... why isn't this changing? Am I in the right directory?? Maybe... I could just be that the Debian configuration of Tomcat is set up for production (not development)! http://stackoverflow.com/questions/415520/how-do-i-make-tomcat-stop-caching-my-servlet-responses