Question

The maven documentation for this has to be wrong.

Here are the various permutations I have tried with all failing to exclude the file:

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <warSourceExcludes>**/*server.properties</warSourceExcludes>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
      <webResources>
        <resource>
          <!-- this is relative to the pom.xml directory -->
          <directory>src/main/resources/com/mycom/myapplication/</directory>
          <!-- there's no default value for this -->
          <excludes>
            <exclude>**/*server.properties</exclude>
          </excludes>
        </resource>
      </webResources>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>

A mail list entry suggests using this older version and a string list:

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
   <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.1</version>
    <configuration>
      <webResources>
        <resource>
          <!-- this is relative to the pom.xml directory -->
          <directory>src/main/resources/com/pictage/provendirect/</directory>
          <!-- there's no default value for this -->
          <excludes>**/*server.properties</excludes>
        </resource>
      </webResources>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>

Which results in:

(found static expression: ‘/*server.properties’ which may act as a default value).
Cause: Cannot assign configuration entry ‘excludes’ to ‘interface java.util.List’ from ‘/*server.properties’, which is of type class java.lang.String

Also tried:

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.1</version>
    <configuration>
      <packagingExcludes>
        **/server.properties
      </packagingExcludes>
    </configuration>
  </plugin>

Any ideas? I am going crazy with this.

Answer 1

A more careful reading of the maven docs suggests:

<configuration>
  <webResources>
    <resource>

should only be used when excluding resources outside /src/main/resources. To do it inside this folder, you need to use warSourceExcludes and possibly warSourceDirectory parameters if the property isn’t in the root of the directory.

I cry a little inside when it takes me hours to to do something via configuration in maven when it could have been handled in two seconds with a scripting language but I guess it’s the ‘right’ way to implement it.