Grails 3.1.10 exclude spring-boot-starter-tomcat plugin from war generation

Question

If I leave the "spring-boot-starter-tomcat" plugin dependency set to compile in the gradle build file I get the following error messages deploying to a standalone Tomcat 7 server:

INFO: validateJarFile(/usr/share/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib/tomcat-embed-core-8.0.36.jar) - jar not loaded. See Servlet Spec 3.0, section 10.7.2. Offending class: javax/servlet/Servlet.class
Aug 18, 2016 2:51:19 AM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader validateJarFile
INFO: validateJarFile(/usr/share/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib/tomcat-embed-el-8.0.36.jar) - jar not loaded. See Servlet Spec 3.0, section 10.7.2. Offending class: javax/el/Expression.class

If I change the dependency to provided I can deploy to Tomcat but get the following error attempting to run or debug within IntelliJ IDEA 15:

ERROR org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication - Application startup failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Failed to process import candidates for configuration class [orderserver.Application]; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to introspect annotated methods on class org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurationSupport
...
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to introspect annotated methods on class org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurationSupport
...
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/ServletContext
...
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.servlet.ServletContext

How can I exclude these dependencies from the war file generation while retaining the ability to run/debug within IDEA?

Even better is there a way to generate a single war file that has embedded Tomcat for standalone execution that can also be deployed to a Tomcat container?

We use provided for grailsVersion=3.1.4 project and it works smooth either in IDE (IntelliJ IDEA 2016.1.3 Build #IU-145.1617, built on June 3, 2016) or production tomcat. Are you sure it's not a mismatch problem of tomcat version? — Michal_Szulc
@Michal_Szulc Yes it is a problem with the tomcat version as I am deploying to Tomcat 7 in production but when I change the dependency to "provided" I can no longer run in IDEA. — James Allman

James Allman James Allman · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-19T23:08:46

This issue was resolved by changing the dependency to provided and using a "Grails" run/debug configuration instead of the "Application" configuration that was set when I created the project with IDEA 15.

Grails 3.1.10 exclude spring-boot-starter-tomcat plugin from war generation

1 Answers