Hey..Cool Are you running it with jetty or within tomcat with the created WAR?
Tomcat, last time I test snipit is create a virtual path on my blog site, after startup for a while it throws exception:
Servlet.service() for servlet error threw exception
java.lang.IllegalStateException: getOutputStream() has already been called for this response , and then Tomcat terminated.
I think maybe I should have a standard migration process, so I create a vmware machine for this.
Now about the patches...You're asking how patches should be created right? A simple way is, if you use Eclipse, checkout the version I have on the repository do the patch you want and then go to team -> create patch. Then you could make the patch available for anyone who is interested.
Not this, I means while building porcess, an ant target can do the patching before compiling and then generate the new and patched jars/war files.
Maybe those patch file can save at the repository and use a build.properties file to enable or disable patching process.