Problems with classpath between Eclipse, Tomcat and JUnit in Spring 3 app

I have web app, based on Spring 3.0.3, that I've been developing using Eclipse 3.4. While doing so I've been running the web app in Tomcat 6.0.18 from Eclipse. That is, I have Eclipse use the Tomcat installation meaning that Tomcat will, as need, modify files etc. (at least, that's my understanding of what it's doing).

My problem is specifying the values for the contextConfigLocations in the web.xml. When running from within Eclipse this worked fine:

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
        classpath:applicationContext.xml
        classpath:applicationContext-security.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

However, when I package the app into a war file (ROOT.war) and then added it to Tomcat's webapp directory and the try to start Tomcat, I get an error that neither of these applicationContext files can be found. But when I change it to below, Tomcat can find the files:

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
        /WEB-INF/config/applicationContext.xml
        /WEB-INF/config/applicationContext-security.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>

I should note that applicationContext.xml includes other applicationContext files that also use the classpath: short hand. When running within Tomcat, I need to drop all use of classpath: in favor of relative paths to get Tomcat to see these files.

Great. Tomcat and Eclise are getting along nicely. But JUnit 4.7 is no longer happy. For whatever reason, files specified using @ContextConfiguration in a test class can't be found unless the classpath: short hand is used. Here is an example:

@ContextConfiguration(locations = {"classpath:applicationContext.xml", "classpath:applicationContext-security.xml"})
public class UserDaoTest extends AbstractTransactionalJUnit4SpringContextTests {

    @Test
    public void testCreateUser() {
    }

So applicationContext.xml and applicationContext-security.xml are found without a problem; however, property files that are specified in applicationContext.xml are not found.

<bean id="appProperties" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertiesFactoryBean">
    <property name="singleton" value="true" />
    <property name="ignoreResourceNotFound" value="true" />
    <property name="locations">
            <list>
                    <value>/WEB-INF/config/spring/base.spring-config.proper开发者_JS百科ties</value>
                    <value>/WEB-INF/config/spring/local.spring-config.properties</value>
            </list>
    </property>
</bean>

But if I specify the location of these files using the classpath: short hand, the property files are found. If I do this though, the files won't be found when running from a war file in Tomcat.

For now I've created a applicationContext-test.xml that is a cut-and-paste conglomeration of all of the other applicationContext files wherein I'm using the classpath: short hand. This seems hacky and error prone and I'm wondering what the issue might be across all of these technologies.

Feedback most welcome!

---

web.xml content should look like

    <context-param>
    <description>
                 Spring Context Configuration.
            </description>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <!-- spring loads all -->
    <param-value>
                classpath*:spring/*.xml,
                classpath*:spring/persistence/*.xml,
                classpath*:spring/webapp/*.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>

see http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/reference/resources.html#resources-app-ctx-wildcards-in-resource-paths for further reference

the junit config should follow the same convention with classpath*:

but beware spring might load .xml context files you don't want it to do