Tomcat is just a Java application. Its install is just a bunch of jar files with some shell scripts to simplify running them. If you look at an install you see that it is just running the Java class ' org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap'. I'm not sure what linking you are worrying about.
For setting JVM arguments, I think you are thinking of 'setenv.sh' or 'setenv.bat'. These are shell scripts where you can set environment variables used when running Tomcat. This includes the standard 'JAVA_OPTS' to set VM arguments.
For setting JVM arguments, I think you are thinking of 'setenv.sh' or 'setenv.bat'. These are shell scripts where you can set environment variables used when running Tomcat. This includes the standard 'JAVA_OPTS' to set VM arguments.