Ant reload task works, but...

[Ra Re]

I am trying to deploy, undeploy and reload a Java EE Web application under Tomcat 6 using Ant 1.7.

All of these tree tasks are "working", deploy and undeploy are working as expected but reload does not..mmm...how to say that...does not.....reload?

Reading the Ant documentation I have found this:

# Reload not supported on WAR deployed at path /foo
Currently, application reloading (to pick up changes to the classes or web.xml file) is not supported when a web application is deployed directly from a WAR file. It only works when the web application is deployed from an unpacked directory. If you are using a WAR file, you should undeploy and then deploy or deploy with the update parameter the application again to pick up your changes.

So the question is, how can I deploy directly from an unpacked directory? I only know how to config the Ant deploy task using a WAR file, is that my mistake?

This is part of my build.xml:

  <taskdef name="deploy"    classname="org.apache.catalina.ant.DeployTask"/>
  <taskdef name="reload"    classname="org.apache.catalina.ant.ReloadTask"/>
  <taskdef name="undeploy"  classname="org.apache.catalina.ant.UndeployTask"/>

  <target name="deploy" depends="war" description="Install web application">
    <deploy url="${url}" 
      username="${username}" 
      password="${password}"
      path="${path}" 
      war="${build.dir}/${ant.project.name}.war" 
      update="true"/>
  </target>

  <target name="reload" depends="dist" description="Reload web application">
    <reload  url="${url}"
      username="${username}"
      password="${password}"
      path="${path}"/>
  </target>

  <target name="undeploy" description="Remove web application">
    <undeploy url="${url}" 
      username="${username}"
      password="${password}"
      path="${path}"/>
  </target>

By now, I have the update="true" attribute in the deploy task because reload does not work for me, but I would like to be able to remove it and use the reload task to update the changes on the application.

Thanks!