Maven best practice for creating ad hoc zip artifact

Question

Assume that I need to manage an artifact that consists of an aribtrary folder / file structure rolled up as a zip archive. It\'s not clear to me how to accomplish this in M

Answer 1

Decide what classifier you will use for your zip file, for sake of argument let's say it would be sample.

In your project create file assembly/sample.xml

Fill in assembly/sample.xml with something like this:

  sample
  
    zip
  
  
    
      /
      some/directory/in/your/project
    
  
  
  
    
      lib
      
        *:pom
      
      true
      false
      runtime
    
  

Add this to your pom's build section

  
    
      
        org.apache.maven.plugins
        maven-assembly-plugin
        
          
            create-distribution
            package
            
              single
            
            
              
                assembly/sample.xml
              
            
          
        
      
    
  

As a result it should create and install you-project-name-VERSION-sample.zip.

I suggest you read chapter on assemblies from Sonatype's maven book: https://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/assemblies.html

Also, read assembly format specification: http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly.html