Getting started with Maven assembly plugin with multi-module project

Question

We had a guy working with us who used the maven-assembly-plugin to package all dependencies. He has since left the company and I\'m trying to figure out how he did this. I am

Answer 1

If I read your question right, what you want to do is to add a new Maven module (called runtime) to an existing project and use the maven-assembly-plugin on this new project to package it.

The first step is then to create the Maven module. I'm not sure if Netbeans provides a facility to do this (Eclise does), but it comes down to:

• in the <modules> section of the parent POM, add a new <module> for runtime.
• create a new folder called runtime at the same directory level of the parent POM

• create a file pom.xml inside this new folder declaring the root POM as parent POM like this:

  <parent>
      <groupId>...</groupId>
      <artifactId>...</artifactId>
      <version>...</version>
  </parent>
  

Then, you need to configure the maven-assembly-plugin to do the packaging of this new module. This is done with the help of a assembly descriptor, whose format is documented here.

To give you something to start with, consider the following POM configuration and assembly descriptor, that will package everything that is under config, data and scripts in a zip file:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.6</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>make-assembly</id>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <descriptors>
                    <descriptor>src/assemble/assembly.xml</descriptor>
                </descriptors>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
     </executions>
  </plugin>

with the assembly.xml:

<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.3"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.3 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-1.1.3.xsd">
  <id>distribution</id>
  <formats>
      <format>zip</format>
  </formats>
  <fileSets>
      <fileSet>
          <directory>config</directory>
          <outputDirectory>/config</outputDirectory>
      </fileSet>
      <fileSet>
          <directory>data</directory>
          <outputDirectory>/data</outputDirectory>
      </fileSet>
      <fileSet>
          <directory>scripts</directory>
          <outputDirectory>/scripts</outputDirectory>
      </fileSet>
    </fileSets>
</assembly>

After running mvn clean install on the parent POM, a zip file will be created under the target directory of the module runtime. It will contain the 3 specified folders.