maven-assembly-plugin: How to change the output directory?

Question

I want to create a zip file containing the jar files and some resource files. But I have some problems to tell the assembly plugin to take files from a source folder and to put it into a target folder without retaining the sources folder structure.

In detail: My files are placed in ../target/lib and they should be zipped to ../app/lib. This is an extract from my xml file which should do that job:

    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.basedir}</directory>
      <outputDirectory>app/lib</outputDirectory>
      <includes>
        <include>target/lib/*.*</include>
      </includes>
    </fileSet>

But what happens is: The files are placed to ../app/lib/target/lib/

How can I tell the maven-assembly-plugin to omit the source file structure and just take the files?

Answer 1

Directory must point to the folder of which all paths (both files and directories) must be copied. So you should do this:

<fileSet>
  <directory>${project.basedir}/target/lib</directory>
  <outputDirectory>app/lib</outputDirectory>
  <includes>
    <include>*.*</include>
  </includes>
</fileSet>

Answer 2

Managed to fix it by setting the "directory" parameter to the source path and removing the source path information from "include":

    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.basedir}/target/lib/</directory>
      <outputDirectory>app/lib</outputDirectory>
      <includes>
        <include>*.*</include>
      </includes>
    </fileSet>