- Development/Test: deployed to $server_root/servlets and timestamp comparison for each request comes in and a new custom classloader is created for reloading the new servlet.
- Production: deployed to $server_root/classes
When a server dispatches a request to a servlet, the server first checks if the servlet's class file has changed on disk. If it has changed, the server abandons the class loader used to load the old version and creates a new instance of the custom class loader to load the new version. Old servlet versions can stay in memory indefinitely (so the effect is the other classes can still hold references to the old servlet instances, causing odd side effects, but the old versions are not used to handle any more requests. Servlet reloading is not performed for classes found in the server's classpath because the core, primordial class loader, loads those classes. These classes are loaded once and retained in memory even when their class files change.
