Best practices for copying files with Maven

Question

I have config files and various documents that I want to copy from the dev environment to the dev-server directory using Maven2. Strangely, Maven does not seem strong at this task.

Some of the options:

• Simple use a copy task in Maven

<copy file="src/main/resources/config.properties" tofile="${project.server.config}/config.properties"/>

• Use the Ant plugin to execute copy from Ant.

• Construct an artifact of type zip, alongside the "main" artifact of the POM which is usually of type jar, then unpack that artifact from the repository into the target directory.

• maven-resources plugin, as mentioned below.

• Maven Assembly plugin -- but this seems to require a lot of manual definitions, when I want to do things simply and "conventionally."

• This page even shows how to build a plugin to do copying!

• maven-upload plugin, as mentioned below.

• maven-dependency-plugin with copy, as mentioned below.

All these seem needlessly ad hoc: Maven is supposed to excel at doing these standard tasks without fuss and bother.

Any advice?

Answer 1

The ant solution above is easiest to configure, but I have had luck using the maven-upload-plugin from Atlassian. I was unable to find good documentation, here is how I use it:

<build>
  <plugin>
    <groupId>com.atlassian.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-upload-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.1</version>
    <configuration>
       <resourceSrc>
             ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}
       </resourceSrc>
       <resourceDest>${jboss.deployDir}</resourceDest>
       <serverId>${jboss.host}</serverId>
       <url>${jboss.deployUrl}</url>
     </configuration>
  </plugin>
</build>

The variables like "${jboss.host}" referenced above are defined in my ~/.m2/settings.xml and are activated using maven profiles. This solution is not constrained to JBoss, this is just what I named my variables. I have a profile for dev, test, and live. So to upload my ear to a jboss instance in test environment I would execute:

mvn upload:upload -P test

Here is a snipet from settings.xml:

<server>
  <id>localhost</id>
  <username>username</username>
  <password>{Pz+6YRsDJ8dUJD7XE8=} an encrypted password. Supported since maven 2.1</password>
</server>
...
<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>dev</id>
    <properties>
      <jboss.host>localhost</jboss.host> 
      <jboss.deployDir>/opt/jboss/server/default/deploy/</jboss.deployDir>
      <jboss.deployUrl>scp://root@localhost</jboss.deployUrl>
    </properties>
  </profile>
  <profile>
    <id>test</id>
    <properties>
       <jboss.host>testserver</jboss.host>
       ...

Notes: The Atlassian maven repo that has this plugin is here: https://maven.atlassian.com/public/

I recommend downloading the sources and looking at the documentation inside to see all the features the plugin provides.

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Answer 2

To summarize some of the fine answers above: Maven is designed to build modules and copy the results to a Maven repository. Any copying of modules to a deployment/installer-input directory must be done outside the context of Maven's core functionality, e.g. with the Ant/Maven copy command.

Answer 3

<build>
    <plugins>
        ...
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.3</version>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
    <resources>
        <resource>
            <directory>src/main/java</directory>
            <includes>
                <include> **/*.properties</include>
            </includes>
        </resource>
    </resources>
    ...
</build>

Answer 4

For a simple copy-tasks I can recommend copy-rename-maven-plugin. It's straight forward and simple to use:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>com.coderplus.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>copy-rename-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>copy-file</id>
            <phase>generate-sources</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>copy</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <sourceFile>src/someDirectory/test.environment.properties</sourceFile>
              <destinationFile>target/someDir/environment.properties</destinationFile>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

If you would like to copy more than one file, replace the <sourceFile>...</destinationFile> part with

<fileSets>
  <fileSet>
    <sourceFile>src/someDirectory/test.environment.properties</sourceFile>
    <destinationFile>target/someDir/environment.properties</destinationFile>
  </fileSet>
  <fileSet>
    <sourceFile>src/someDirectory/test.logback.xml</sourceFile>
    <destinationFile>target/someDir/logback.xml</destinationFile>
  </fileSet>                
</fileSets>

Furthermore you can specify multiple executions in multiple phases if needed, the second goal is "rename", which simply does what it says while the rest of the configuration stays the same. For more usage examples refer to the Usage-Page.

Note: This plugin can only copy files, not directories. (Thanks to @james.garriss for finding this limitation.)

Answer 5

I was able to piece together a number of different sources for this answer:

...
<repository>
    <id>atlassian</id>
    <name>Atlassian Repo</name>
    <url>https://maven.atlassian.com/content/repositories/atlassian-public</url>
</repository>
...
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.atlassian.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-upload-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.1</version>
</dependency>
...
<plugin>
    <groupId>com.atlassian.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-upload-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.1</version>
    <configuration>
        <serverId>jira-repo</serverId>
        <resourceSrc>
            ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}
        </resourceSrc>
        <resourceDest>opt/jira/webapps</resourceDest> <!-- note: no leading slash -->
        <url>scp://root@jira</url>
    </configuration>
</plugin>
...

From ~/.m2/settings.xml:

...
<servers>
  <server>
    <id>jira-repo</id>
    <username>myusername</username>
    <password>mypassword</password>
  </server>
</servers>
...

Then run the command: (the -X is for debug)

mvn -X upload:upload

Answer 6

I can only assume that your ${project.server.config} property is something custom defined and is outside of the standard directory layout.

If so, then I'd use the copy task.