Question

I’m using Maven 3 to package a WAR file, and I cannot figure out how to exclude files in src/main/webapp from the final WAR generated. One of the directories in src/main/webapp is a git submodule, and I want to exclude files like README, docs/, etc. in that git submodule form going to my final WAR.

My initial attempt was to use the maven-antrun-plugin to delete the files. I tried the delete actions in prepare-package and package, but neither worked. Doing the deletes in package removed the files from my target/<projname>/..., but the final WAR still contains the files. Running maven with -debug shows that the files are deleted after the WAR file is generated. It’s almost as if I want to do the deletes in between prepare-package and package.

My next attempts were to try to specify files to exclude from the WAR (some solutions linked below), but nothing seems to work. I might not be specifying the path to the unwanted files correctly, and I’m wondering if it has to do with the fact that my unwanted files are not in src/main/resources, but in src/main/webapp.

I’ve tried many solutions, but nothing seems to work. Each time I try something new, I do mvn clean and delete the target directory. The final generated WAR file always contains the unwanted files.

I feel like the answer to my problem exists on the SO and google searches I’ve come across, but nothing I’ve tried has worked exactly as I need. Below are some solutions I’ve tried.

• exclude file from maven build
• In Maven how to exclude resources from the generated jar?

Answer 1

since the files are inside the webapp folder I would guess the maven-war-plugin is the best point to start. the resource filtering with excludes points to src/main/resources and is not aware of the webapp folder.

So http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-war-plugin/war-mojo.html

There is a parameter: warSourceExcludes: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-war-plugin/war-mojo.html#warSourceExcludes

this should allow filtering the README files and so on.