Question

I’m new to maven, I keep running in to the following syntax:

<include>**/*</include>

Im not sure how to interpret **/*, is this some Java or maven convention?

Answer 1

It is more related to <fileset> Ant convention upon which Maven is built.

**/* : all files in all subdirectories: see Ant Patterns.

When ** is used as the name of a directory in the pattern, it matches zero or more directories.
For example: /test/** matches all files/directories under /test/, such as /test/x.java, or /test/foo/bar/xyz.html, but not /xyz.xml.