This contains short notes on using AspectJ with various J2EE servers and deployment tools.

Using AspectJ in servlets

Generally

AspectJ programs work if run in the same namespace and with aspectjrt.jar. Servlet runners and J2EE web containers should run AspectJ programs fine if the classes and required libraries are deployed as usual. As with any shared library, if more than one application is using AspectJ, then the aspectjrt.jar should be deployed where it will be loaded by a common classloader. The same is true of any shared aspects.

Running AspectJ servlets in Tomcat 4.x

In Tomcat, you can deploy application servlets in WAR's or in exploded web directories and share code across applications.

Use ajc to compile the servlets, and deploy the classes as usual into {WebRoot}/WEB-INF/classes.
If your web applications or aspects do not interact, deploy aspectjrt.jar into {WebRoot}/WEB-INF/lib.
If your web applications or aspects might interact, deploy them to ${CATALINA_BASE}/shared/lib.

Tomcat 4.x uses the Jasper engine based on Ant to compile JSP's. To set up ajc as the compiler, do the following before starting Tomcat:

Put aspectjtools.jar in ${CATALINA_HOME}/common/lib so that it can be loaded by Jasper.

Update Jasper servlet parameters in ${CATALINA_HOME}/conf/web.xml to tell Ant to use ajc by setting the compiler property to the AspectJ compiler adapter:

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>jsp</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet</servlet-class>
        ...
        <init-param>
            <param-name>compiler</param-name>
            <param-value>org.aspectj.tools.ant.taskdefs.Ajc11CompilerAdapter</param-value>
        </init-param>

The classpath is dynamically generated from the webapp deployment, so aspectjrt.jar should be in {webapp}/WEB-INF/lib or some shared or common directory supported by the server.
Alternatively, you can precompile JSP's using this Ant script. That involves manually updating the web.xml file with the Jasper-generated servlet mappings.