How do I get Maven 2 to build 2 separate WAR files

Question

When doing a mvn install I want to end up with 2 WAR files in my target directory. One will contain the production web.xml and the other will contain the test/uat web.xml.

I've tried this:

<build>
    <finalName>cas-server</finalName>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.1-beta-1</version>
            <configuration>
                <webXml>src/main/config/prod/web.xml</webXml>
                <warName>cas-prod</warName>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.1-beta-1</version>
            <configuration>
                <webXml>src/main/config/test/web.xml</webXml>
                <warName>cas-test</warName>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

But I only end up with the test WAR.

Answer 1

I don't think you can do this in one step (actually, I'm surprised that Maven doesn't complain about your setup and wonder which one is applied) and I'd suggest to use profiles and maybe filtering to manage this use case.

If your web.xml are really different, you could just put your maven-war-plugin configuration in two profiles. Or, better, you could merge them into something like this:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.1-beta-1</version>
  <configuration>
    <webXml>src/main/config/${env}/web.xml</webXml>
    <warName>cas-test</warName>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

And set the env property in two profiles to pick up the right web.xml at build time.

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>uat</id>
    <properties>
      <env>test</env>
    </properties>
  </profile>
  <profile>
    <id>prod</id>
    <properties>
      <env>prod</env>
    </properties>
  </profile>
</profiles>

If your web.xml are similar (i.e. if only values differ in them), you could define properties and their values in two profiles and use filtering to apply them. Something like this:

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>env-uat</id>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>env</name>
        <value>uat</value>
      </property>
    </activation>
    <properties>
      <key1>uat_value_key_1</key1>
      <keyN>uat_value_key_n</keyN>
    </properties>
  </profile>
  <profile>
    <id>env-prod</id>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>env</name>
        <value>prod</value>
      </property>
    </activation>  
    <properties>
      <key1>prod_value_key_1</key1>
      <keyN>prod_value_key_n</keyN>
    </properties>
  </profile>
</profiles>

Then activate one profile or the other by passing the env property on the command line, e.g.:

mvn -Denv=uat package

Another option would be to put the values into specific filters and pick up the right one at build time (like in this post).

There are really many options but as I said, I don't think you can do this without runngin the build twice.

More resources on profiles/filtering:

• Maven Book: Chapter 11. Build Profiles
• Maven Book: Chapter 15.3. Resource Filtering
• Introduction to Build Profiles
• Use an alternative Maven Profile during test phase
• maven profile filtering search on Google