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• Discovery of tag libraries — . That is scanning for Tag Library Descriptor files (META-INF/**/*.tld) (shortened as TLD scanning)
  

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There are two options that can be specified in your WEB-INF/web.xml file:

1. Set metadata-complete="true" attribute on the <web-app> element. 2. Add an empty <absolute-ordering /> element.
   

Setting metadata-complete="true" disables scanning your web application and its libraries for classes that use annotations to define components of a web application (Servlets etc.). The metadata-complete option is not enough to disable all of annotation scanning. If there is a SCI with a HandlesTypes @HandlesTypes annotation, Tomcat has to scan your application for classes that use annotations or interfaces specified in that annotation.

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Scanning for web application resources and TLD scanning are not affected by these options.

See also a chapter in Tomcat 7 migration guide.

Exclude JARs from scanning

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