Eclipse .classpath exclusion pattern

Question

I have seen this:

<classpathentry excluding="**" kind="src" output="target/classes" path="src/main/resources"/>

In my Eclipse .classpath file many times when creating a new Maven project, but I can not seem to figure out - what in the heck does excluding="**" mean?

EDIT: I guess what I am trying to get at here, is that though it seem like excluding="**" should exclude everything in src/main/resources, yet - it does not. When I create a test project and put in folders (for example: META-INF) they DO in fact show up in target/classes. Why? What is the point of the exclusion then?

TIA

Answer 1

It basically means 'exclude everything'. ** is a wildcard that matches any file or directory, anywhere in a directory tree.

It's useful for Subversion .svn folders, for example, which can appear at any level in a source tree. In that case you could exclude **/.svn, which would match any .svn folder. In this case, **/ is matching any directory in the tree.