it's not recommended to perform "mvn clean install" unless you want to use your code into another project.
That's what I do when I want to publish code change into a webserver for debug purposes
1/ I configure tomcat7-maven-plugin into the parent pom project:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.2</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
2/ then
mvn tomcat7:run
will launch an embded tomcat7 server with your resources deployed.
to publish your code to a remote tomcat, you can use
tomcat7:deploy
after having configured tomcat7 plugin correctly
alternatively, import your maven project as an eclipse project (plugin name: m2e) then right click on the projet, debug on server will launch the eclipse configured tomcat.
whenever you save a resource, it will be automagically deployed on the eclipse-managed tomcat.