title: Spring-WS: How generate the WSDL without having to start the web service?
body: <p>We use Spring-WS as the basis for implementing a web service (with the WSDL generated by the framework). As well as a WAR file our build produces a client side JAR (for use by our Java clients and our own end-to-end functional tests) consisting of schema generated DTOs and stubs for the web service methods. These are generated using wsimport (JAX-WS). Problem is this gives rise to a multi-step build process:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Build the server WAR file;</li>
  <li>Start Tomcat (to make the WSDL available);</li>
  <li>Generate the client side stubs (pointing wsimport at the WSDL url).</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p><strong>Is there some way to generate the WSDL without having to start the web service?</strong> Then we could build everything in a single step.</p>