Maven best practice for creating ad hoc zip artifact

Question

Assume that I need to manage an artifact that consists of an aribtrary folder / file structure rolled up as a zip archive. It's not clear to me how to accomplish this in Maven in a way that best fits "the Maven way."

I know that there is no "zip" packaging type. Does this mean there is no generic lifecycle in Maven to simply take what I have in the resources folder, zip it up, and install/deploy it to my repositories?

I'm looking for options, with evaluations of how each option satisifies my requirement to follow the maven way, as I do not wish to incur the obvious penalities of straying from the golden path . . .

Answer 1

Decide what classifier you will use for your zip file, for sake of argument let's say it would be sample.

In your project create file assembly/sample.xml

Fill in assembly/sample.xml with something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <assembly   xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.2"   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"   xsi:schemaLocation="     http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.2       http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-1.1.2.xsd" >   <id>sample</id>   <formats>     <format>zip</format>   </formats>   <fileSets>     <fileSet>       <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>       <directory>some/directory/in/your/project</directory>     </fileSet>   </fileSets>   <!-- use this section if you want to package dependencies -->   <dependencySets>     <dependencySet>       <outputDirectory>lib</outputDirectory>       <excludes>         <exclude>*:pom</exclude>       </excludes>       <useStrictFiltering>true</useStrictFiltering>       <useProjectArtifact>false</useProjectArtifact>       <scope>runtime</scope>     </dependencySet>   </dependencySets> </assembly> 

Add this to your pom's build section

  <build>     <plugins>       <plugin>         <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>         <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>         <executions>           <execution>             <id>create-distribution</id>             <phase>package</phase>             <goals>               <goal>single</goal>             </goals>             <configuration>               <descriptors>                 <descriptor>assembly/sample.xml</descriptor>               </descriptors>             </configuration>           </execution>         </executions>       </plugin>     </plugins>   </build> 

As a result it should create and install you-project-name-VERSION-sample.zip.

I suggest you read chapter on assemblies from Sonatype's maven book: https://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/assemblies.html

Also, read assembly format specification: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly.html