tomcat basedir docBase path workdir
docBase
The Document Base (also known as the Context Root) directory for this web application, or the pathname to the web application archive file (if this web application is being executed directly from the WAR file). You may specify an absolute pathname for this directory or WAR file, or a pathname that is relative to the appBase directory of the owning Host.
The value of this field must not be set unless the Context element is defined in server.xml or the docBase is not located under the Host's appBase.
If a symbolic link is used for docBase then changes to the symbolic link will only be effective after a Tomcat restart or by undeploying and redeploying the context. A context reload is not sufficient.
path
The context path of this web application, which is matched against the beginning of each request URI to select the appropriate web application for processing. All of the context paths within a particular Host must be unique. If you specify a context path of an empty string (""), you are defining the default web application for this Host, which will process all requests not assigned to other Contexts.
This attribute must only be used when statically defining a Context in server.xml. In all other circumstances, the path will be inferred from the filenames used for either the .xml context file or the docBase.
Even when statically defining a Context in server.xml, this attribute must not be set unless either the docBase is not located under the Host's appBase or both deployOnStartup and autoDeploy are false. If this rule is not followed, double deployment is likely to result.
workDir
Pathname to a scratch directory to be provided by this Context for temporary read-write use by servlets within the associated web application. This directory will be made visible to servlets in the web application by a servlet context attribute (of type java.io.File) named javax.servlet.context.tempdir as described in the Servlet Specification. If not specified, a suitable directory underneath $CATALINA_BASE/work will be provided.