Maven assembly plugin example

Maven assembly plugin is primarily intended to allow users to aggregate the project output along with its dependencies, modules, site documentation, and other files into a single distribution archive like zip, tar, tar.gz, war, etc. Another example where this is handy is to create deployable files for different environments like myapp-1.10-SNAPSHOT-dev.zip, myapp-1.10-SNAPSHOT-test.zip, and myapp-1.10-SNAPSHOT-prod.zip where each containing environment related properties files packaged.

3 steps to create an assembly

1. choose or write the assembly descriptor files to use like dev-assembly.xml, prod-assembly.xml, etc
2. configure the Assembly Plugin in your project's pom.xml, and include the above descriptor files
3. run "mvn assembly:single" on your project.

For example:

The pom.xml file

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
 <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
 <groupId>com.app/groupId>
 <artifactId>myapp</artifactId>
 <packaging>war</packaging>
 <name>myapp</name>
 <version>1.10-SNAPSHOT</version> 
 
 ...
 
 <plugins>
     ....
     <plugin>
   <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
   <version>2.2.1</version>
   <executions>
    <execution>
     <id>assemble</id>
     <phase>package</phase>
     <configuration>
      <descriptors>
       <descriptor>assembly/dev-assembly.xml</descriptor>
       <descriptor>assembly/test-assembly.xml</descriptor>
       <descriptor>assembly/prod-assembly.xml</descriptor>
      </descriptors>
     </configuration>
     <goals>
      <goal>single</goal>
     </goals>
    </execution>
   </executions>
  </plugin>
 
 
 <plugins>
 
 ....
</project>

Now the dev-assembly.xml file

<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>dev</id>
 <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
 <formats>
  <format>zip</format>
 </formats>
 <fileSets>
  <fileSet>
   <directory>config/dev</directory>
   <outputDirectory>/app-properties</outputDirectory>
  </fileSet>
  <fileSet>
   <directory>jboss-config/dev/deploy</directory>
   <outputDirectory>/ds</outputDirectory>
  </fileSet>
 </fileSets>
 <files>
  <file>
   <source>jboss-config/common/myapp-container.properties</source>
   <outputDirectory>/myapp-container-properties</outputDirectory>
   <destName>my-app-dev.properties</destName>
  </file>
 </files>
</assembly>

The prod environment prod-assembly.xml will have something like

<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>prod</id>
  <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
 <formats>
  <format>zip</format>
 </formats>
 <fileSets>
  <fileSet>
   <directory>config/prod</directory>
   <outputDirectory>/app-properties</outputDirectory>
  </fileSet>
  <fileSet>
   <directory>jboss-config/prod/deploy</directory>
   <outputDirectory>/ds</outputDirectory>
  </fileSet>
 </fileSets>
 <files>
     <file>
      <source>jboss-config/common/myapp-container.properties</source>
      <outputDirectory>/container-properties</outputDirectory>
      <destName>my-app-prod.properties</destName>
    </file>
   </files>
</assembly>

The main goal in the assembly plugin is the single goal. It is used to create all assemblies.

Now to generate different packages like myapp-1.10-SNAPSHOT-dev.zip, myapp-1.10-SNAPSHOT-test.zip, and myapp-1.10-SNAPSHOT-prod.zip

mvn package