Liferay deployment descriptor (using Tomcat)

Question

I have checked out Liferay portal from SVN trunk, and I have successfuly build Liferay for the first time using

ant clean start deploy

so my Tomcat contains Liferay exploded war under

 CATALINA_HOME/webapps/ROOT/*

However, I am having issue starting Tomcat, and it complains on my CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/ROOT.xml deployment descriptor.

Should I change it manually ? And where to find Liferay deployment descriptor file if I need to replace ROOT.xml?

Here is my output from Tomcat log file:

INFO: Deploying configuration descriptor C:\dev\projects\java\liferay_portal\apache-tomcat-7.0.37\conf\Catalina\localhost\ROOT.xml
Mar 11, 2013 8:50:57 AM org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase addChildInternal
SEVERE: ContainerBase.addChild: start: 
org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[]]
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:154)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:633)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployDescriptor(HostConfig.java:657)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployDescriptor.run(HostConfig.java:1637)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:439)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:895)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:918)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/liferay/portal/kernel/bean/BeanLocator
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredFields(Class.java:2300)
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredFields(Class.java:1745)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.Introspection.getDeclaredFields(Introspection.java:106)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.WebAnnotationSet.loadFieldsAnnotation(WebAnnotationSet.java:261)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.WebAnnotationSet.loadApplicationListenerAnnotations(WebAnnotationSet.java:90)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.WebAnnotationSet.loadApplicationAnnotations(WebAnnotationSet.java:65)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.applicationAnnotationsConfig(ContextConfig.java:405)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.configureStart(ContextConfig.java:881)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.ContextConfig.lifecycleEvent(ContextConfig.java:369)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleBase.java:90)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5179)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
    ... 11 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.liferay.portal.kernel.bean.BeanLocator
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1713)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1558)
    ... 25 more
Mar 11, 2013 8:50:57 AM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployDescriptor
SEVERE: Error deploying configuration descriptor C:\dev\projects\java\liferay_portal\apache-tomcat-7.0.37\conf\Catalina\localhost\ROOT.xml

Answer 1

I hope you have followed the instructions in the user-guide of updating catalina.properties's property common.loader and have also included the dependency jars in tomcat/lib/ext.

_{Converted my comment into an answer, so that this question can be resolved}