From the file RUNNING.txt I can read: "Out of the box, Tomcat 5.5 requires the Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment (JRE) version 5.0 or later." And later in the same file also: " ============================= Running With JRE 5.0 Or Later ============================= (1) Download and Install the J2SE Runtime Environment (JRE) (1.1) Download the Java 2 Standard Edition Runtime Environment (JRE), release version 5.0 or later, from http://java.sun.com/j2se. (1.2) Install the JRE according to the instructions included with the release. (1.3) Set an environment variable named JAVA_HOME to the pathname of the directory into which you installed the JRE, e.g. c:\j2sdk5.0 or /usr/local/java/j2sdk5.0. " So a JRE should be enough, although the path examples at step 1.3 mention JDK installation paths. However, when using the installed JRE and setting the value of JAVA_HOME to its' path "C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_11", when I run bin\startup.bat I get the message: " C:\dev\apache-tomcat-5.5.23\bin>startup.bat The JAVA_HOME environment variable is not defined correctly This environment variable is needed to run this program NB: JAVA_HOME should point to a JDK not a JRE " So, as a matter of fact I need indeed a JDK although the docs state the contrary. :-/
Actually, A JRE is fine but running text is wrong. If you are using a JRE you need to set JRE_HOME rather than JAVA_HOME. The docs have been updated in svn and will be included in the next release.