It can be quite complex to setup Apache Tomcat. Before doing so, you could consider other alternative options:
- If you are going to use Spring Boot you can just use Maven and the Spring Boot internal server (recommended)
- If you are going to use PHP (like laravel or lumen) you could use the build-in web server
- If you are using an IDE like netbeans you could use glassfish instead
- You can also use Docker to setup the environment easier.
Note that sometimes build-in web servers like the one include with PHP are not multi-threaded which in some cases may cause problems in your app.
For complete setup instructions read this detailed article (external link).