The current java-tomcat package is only building the jar-files and uses Tomcat only as a servlet-api package. This patch series changes it to the "real" package with a bin, conf, ... directory. If you have a CATALINA_BASE, i.e. a Tomcat instance directory with conf, log, webapps, you can start Tomcat like that: CATALINA_BASE=/home/bjoern/guix/tmp/catalina-home /gnu/store/q5dqsiiwb665jfb6ckcfpw3ijgm4gyh7-java-tomcat-8.5.40/bin/startup.sh And then navigate to http://localhost:8080/ to view your new site. The standard Tomcat installation copies the commons-daemon.jar and the java-ecj.jar. We better use symlinks to the input package. But these would be overridden by a repacking phase: Thus, we need to modify the ant-build-system, placing this series into the staging branch. What's finally outstanding is a tomcat-service. Björn