Why run tomcat7:deploy vs tomcat7:redeploy?

Question

Is there any reason to ever run tomcat7:deploy instead of tomcat7:redeploy? So far, I haven't found anything the deploy can do that the redeploy can't, however, a deploy only fails if the app is deployed already, which needs a redeploy. The redeploy works even after you tomcat7:undeploy the app, which should revert it to the most initial stage.

Why does tomcat7:deploy exist beside the redeploy which seems to do everything it does plus more?

I am using

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
</plugin>

Answer 1

I took a look at the source code, it seems that the only difference is that deploy performs a check to see if the project is already deployed. If it is, the deployment fails. redeploy will undeploy instead if it finds an already deployed application.

So I don't think deploy is all that useful. I can see how it makes sense to use it if for some reason your application can't be hot-reloaded and requires some different process to be taken down. In that case, it would make sense to prefer deploy over redeploy.