Maven Assembly Plugin - install the created assembly

Question

I have a project that simply consists of files. I want to package those files into a zip and store them in a maven repository. I have the assembly plugin configured to build t

Answer 1

I have the assembly plugin configured to build the zip file and that part works just fine, but I cannot seem to figure out how to install the zip file?

Well, the created assembly should get automatically attached to the project and then uploaded into the repository on an install and deploy goal. Can you show your pom?

Update: With your current configuration, I don't think that the assembly gets created as part of your build. You need to bind the single goal to a lifecycle phase, typically package:

  
    maven-assembly-plugin
    2.2-beta-5
    
      
        ../packaging.xml
      
    
    
      
        make-assembly 
        package 
        
          single 
        
      
    
  

And now it should get installed/deployed properly.

Also, if I want to use this assembly in another artifact, how would I do that? I am intending on calling dependency:unpack, but I don't have an artifact in the repository to unpack.

You can declare a dependency on an assembly (using the right classifier and type in your case) but since dependency are resolved through the repository, you'll need to solve the first step first. Then, declare something like this (where the classifier is the assembly's id):

  com. ... .virtualHost
  ***
  0.0.1
  ...
  zip