I've dealt with deploying Java apps in-container, as .war files, and it has invariably been painful. Deployment to a new server requires installing the containe

I've dealt with deploying Java apps in-container, as .war files, and it has invariably been painful. Deployment to a new server requires installing the container first. Then configuring it, an excruciating process of editing many XML files. Configuration management for production, staging, QA, and development environments almost immediately becomes a whole separate set of fragile programs and scripts. I have found it much easier to treat the main app as just a piece of software that happens to interact with the rest of the world using HTTP. Deployment becomes trivial; it really just needs a startup script and a directory of .jar files (dependency libraries) and another .jar or directory of .class files for your actual application. Installing on a new server doesn't require much more than a pre-installed JVM. Out of curiosity, what value does deploying in a container add for you?