I’m assuming you’re referring to the /WEB-INF directory in the root of the web application folder structure. No, it’s not in the classpath. /WEB-INF/classes is on the classpath though, and so are the JAR files in /WEB-INF/lib.
As far as I know, “INF” stands for “Information”, as you said. It probably was named WEB-INF for similarity with the META-INF directory in JAR files. Sometimes the meaning of a directory changes so much over time that it no longer makes sense. For example, bin directories in Unix/Linux often contain non-binary “executable” files, such …
Files in /WEB-INF folder are indeed not publicly accessible by enduser. So you cannot have something like http://localhost:8080/contextname/WEB-INF/some.xhtml. That would be a potential security hole as the enduser would be able to view among others /WEB-INF/web.xml and so on. You can however use the /WEB-INF folder to put master template files, include files and tag …
This should have nothing to do with eclipse and m2eclipse, and optionally for better support – m2e-wtp. Also, you don’t need copy-dependencies. Here are a few possible reasons: you should invoke mvn package (or right-click > maven > package) and obtain a war file – the <packaging> (in the pom) must be war your dependencies …
The Servlet 2.4 specification says this about WEB-INF (page 70): A special directory exists within the application hierarchy named WEB-INF. This directory contains all things related to the application that aren’t in the document root of the application. The WEB-INF node is not part of the public document tree of the application. No file contained …