Stuttering start to JSP debugging in IntelliJ IDEA - debugging

Question

Summary
When using IntelliJ IDEA to debug a JSP, I'm seeing the JSP get triggered twice before the actual request from the browser. Does anyone know why?
Updated with servlet test below.
Overview
I'm using (evaluating) IntelliJ IDEA for (effectively) the first time. When doing web application debugging, I'm seeing an odd behavior that suggests to me I have something misconfigured somewhere: If I have a breakpoint set in code that will run in response to the startup page, the code runs twice before the browser is launched, and then a third time in response to the browser request. I'd like to know whether I may have gone wrong somewhere (or if I haven't gone wrong, what's going on).
The Setup
A) Created a new web application project
Created a new project from scratch
Gave it a name and identified it as a Java module
Accepted the default src directory
Chose "Web Application" from the Desired Technologies list
That gave me a standard structure (src, WEB-INF, etc.) with a default index.jsp in it.
B) Added some simple code to the JSP to output the date.
C) Put a breakpoint in the code.
D) Configured my web browser in File | Settings | Web Browsers
E) Went to Run | Edit Configurations... and:
Clicked [+] | Tomcat Server | Local
Gave it name
Clicked the Configure... button next to the drop-down list of application servers (since I didn't have any yet) and pointed it at my standalone Tomcat6 server (see below), accepting all the defaults
Back in the debug configuration, told it to deploy the "war exploded" artifact for this configuration
Added a "?foo=bar" query string to the default startup URL, so: http://localhost:8080/?foo=bar (you'll see why below)
Left everything else at defaults
Clicked OK
The Run
Choose Run | Debug. It happily starts up the Tomcat server.
It hits the breakpoint. Examining the request shows that this is a GET from user-agent "Java/1.6.0_20". It has the query string configured above. No attributes, no parameters other than the query string one.
Click Resume Program button (F9).
It hits the breakpoint again. This is also a GET from user-agent "Java/1.6.0_20", but it does not have the query string. No attributes, no parameters.
Click Resume Program button (F9).
It launches the browser and hits the breakpoint again. This is a GET from the browser (with the query string) and looks perfectly normal.
I see the behavior both with and without the query string, I just added it to see when/whether it showed up.
If I create a class and use that class from the code in the JSP and move my breakpoint into the class's code, that breakpoint does get hit all three times, so if it were doing real work (looking something up in a database, for instance), it would really do the work. I wondered if this was some phantom pre-compile call or something, but A) it shouldn't be, and B) it doesn't seem to be.
Run with Servlet
I wanted to tease out the behavior a bit more, so I added a servlet to the project, mapped it to the path /foo, and changed my debug configuration to trigger http://localhost:8080/foo?foo=bar rather than the index page. I also added another JSP to the project, at the root, called another.jsp. This revealed very interesting behavior:
Choose Run | Debug. It happily starts up the Tomcat server.
It hits the breakpoint in the servlet code. Examining the request shows that this is a GET from user-agent "Java/1.6.0_20". It has the query string. No attributes, no parameters other than the query string one.
Click Resume Program button (F9).
It hits the breakpoint in the index.jsp(?!). This is also a GET from user-agent "Java/1.6.0_20", but it does not have the query string. No attributes, no parameters. Note that index.jsp has nothing to do with the startup path /foo.
Click Resume Program button (F9).
It launches the browser and hits the breakpoint in the servlet again. This is a GET from the browser (with the query string) and looks perfectly normal.
The breakpoint in the another.jsp file is never hit. So I suspected the triggering of the index.jsp (with no query string) relates to it being the default "welcome file." So I added a welcome-file-list to my web.xml and set up another.jsp as the only welcome-file. Sure enough, now the breakpoint in another.jsp gets hit, and not the one in index.jsp.
More Details
Fairly generic Ubuntu 10.04 LTS desktop install
Freshly downloaded and unpacked IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate installation (30-day trial)
Freshly downloaded and unpacked standalone Tomcat6 install (IDEA didn't like the central install I'd done via Synaptic, the split directory structure confused it, so I stopped that server and just used a simple download-and-unpack version)
Sun's Java 6 JDK
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Examining the request shows that this is a GET from user-agent "Java/1.6.0_20".
That happens when you deploy the webapp on ROOT of Tomcat. The Tomcat server Eclipse plugin will do a self-test on / during startup (which indirectly loads the welcome-file as definied in web.xml).
What can you do? Either live with it or deploy on a context other than ROOT.