Sure! In fact I already fixed it locally. It is not an eclipse-only feature though. There is an IntelliJ plugin called SmartTomcat (https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9492-smart-tomcat) which deploys applications in the same way. It is a little difficult to find the culprit, though, so I guess most people just give up and use the slower way of packing everything into a WAR and deploying it in that way.