Struts is not currently a standard part of either Eclipse or tomcat. Consequently, specific struts resources must be obtained and installed in both systems. The process is straight-forward, but is reviewed here to minimize time and frustration. Specific resources are also listed.
Eclipse
This discussion will assume Eclipse 3.3.2 as the IDE , Struts 1.2 as the version of Struts, and Ameteras set of Struts plugins.
To support Struts in Eclipse requires a special Struts plugin, which must be obtained from a third party. Two popular plugins are MyEclipse and StrutsIDE. MyEclipse is supported, and costs range from a little more than $30 per year (2009) to almost $160, depending on version.. StrutsIDE is free, but does not support as rich a set of function as MyEclipse. Nevertheless, since it is free, it will be the version discussed here.
You will need to download a Tomcat plugin for Eclipse. The currently recommended one is from Sysdeo. It can also be downloaded from them or from the course tools page. Installation is just a matter of unzipping the download, copying the plugin file to the auxiliary Eclipse plugin directory, and creating a link in the Eclipse links directory to it.
The StrutsIDE plugins can be downloaded from the StrutsIDE site or from the course tools directory. Installation is similar to that for the Tomcat plugin. One wrinkle with StrutsIDE is that you also need to install a version of HTMLEditor and GEF. Plugins for both are included in the tools directory.
TomcatSince the JavaServer where Struts applications will be tested and run requires access to Strut's special classes, the supporting .jar and other files that provide these resources must be to Tomcat. When you add Struts support to a Tomcat project, the necessary Java Jar files and taglibs are placed in your projects WEB-XML directory and will be available to Tomcat from that location.
If you run your applications on the Department's tomcat5 server, you will not need to install struts jar and taglib files there, since they have already been installed.
If you deploy your application to a Tomcat server and run it from that process without reference to Eclipse, you will need to place copies of the necessary Jar and taglib files where the server can locate them. Tomcat's shared/lib directory is a good choice. You may copy them from your Eclipse projects WEB-INF/lib directory, although you will have to do so from your file browser and not from within Eclipse.