title: Spring : serving static resources outside context root
body: <p>in a web app, I need to serve static contents (images) located outside the application context directory. The overall application architecture requires me to use Tomcat to perform this. I thought I could benefit from Spring's <code>&lt;mvc:resources&gt;</code> to configure a mapping between application URLs and directory contents. But AFAIK it's <code>mapping</code> attribute only handles context relative, or classpath mappings. Hence, what I'd like to use :</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;mvc:resources location="/images/**" mapping="/absolute/path/to/image/dir"/&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>doesn't work. As I'd rather avoid writing a simple file transfer servlet, I'd be glad if anyone could give me some pointers on existing Spring based solutions/workarounds.</p>
  
  <p>Many thanks.</p>
  
  <p>Homer</p>