The Servlet 4.0 specification is out and Tomcat 9.0.x does support it. Time to dive into Tomcat 9. [updated on Sep.2.2018]

Prerequisite: Java

Since OS X 10.7 Java is not (pre-)installed anymore, let’s fix that first. As I’m writing this, Java 1.8.0_181 is the latest version for Java 8, available for download here: 

The JDK installer package comes in a dmg and installs easily on the Mac; and after opening the Terminal app again,

 

1	java -version

now shows something like this:

 

1 2 3

java version "1.8.0_181" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_181-b13) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.181-b13, mixed mode)

Whatever you do, when opening Terminal and running ‘java -version’, you should see something like this, with a version of at least 1.8.x I.e. Tomcat 9.x requires Java 8 or later.

sudo

sudo

 is a program for Unix-like operating systems, allowing you to run programs with the security privileges of another user (normally the superuser, or root). Since we are creating directories, outside of your home folder, administrator right are required. I.e., when executing sudo you will be asked to enter your password; and your Mac User account needs to be an ‘Admin’ account.

JAVA_HOME is an important environment variable, not just for Tomcat, and it’s important to get it right. Here is a trick that allows me to keep the environment variable current, even after a Java Update was installed. In ~/.bash_profile, I set the variable like so:

 

1	export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home)

 

Installing Tomcat

Here are the easy to follow steps to get it up and running on your Mac

1. Download a binary distribution of the core module: apache-tomcat-9.0.12 from . I picked the tar.gz in Binary Distributions / Coresection.
2. Opening/unarchiving the archive will create a new folder structure in your Downloads folder: (btw, this free  is perfect for all kinds of compressed files and superior to the built-in Archive Utility.app)
   ~/Downloads/apache-tomcat-9.0.12
3. Open to Terminal app to move the unarchived distribution to /usr/local
   sudo mkdir -p /usr/local
   sudo mv ~/Downloads/apache-tomcat-9.0.12 /usr/local
4. To make it easy to replace this release with future releases, we are going to create a symbolic link that we are going to use when referring to Tomcat (after removing the old link, you might have from installing a previous version):
   sudo rm -f /Library/Tomcat
   sudo ln -s /usr/local/apache-tomcat-9.0.12 /Library/Tomcat
5. Change ownership of the /Library/Tomcat folder hierarchy:
   sudo chown -R <your_username> /Library/Tomcat
6. Make all scripts  executable:
   sudo chmod +x /Library/Tomcat/bin/*.sh

 

Tomcat 9.x

Instead of using the start and stop scripts, like so:

$ /Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh

$ /Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh

 

you may also want to check out , or   a tiny freeware app, providing a UI to quickly start/stop Tomcat. It may not say so, but Tomcat Controller works on macOS 10.14 just fine.

 

Finally, after your started Tomcat, open your Mac’s Web browser and take a look at the default page: http://localhost:8080