Best practices for copying files with Maven

<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>

Don't shy away from the Antrun plugin. Just because some people tend to think that Ant and Maven are in opposition, they are not. Use the copy task if you need to perform some unavoidable one-off customization:

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    <plugins>
      [...]
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>deploy</phase>
            <configuration>
              <target>

                <!--
                  Place any Ant task here. You can add anything
                  you can add between <target> and </target> in a
                  build.xml.
                -->

              </target>
            </configuration>
            <goals>
              <goal>run</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  [...]
</project>

In answering this question, I'm focusing on the details of what you asked. How do I copy a file? The question and the variable name lead me to a larger questions like: "Is there a better way to deal with server provisioning?" Use Maven as a build system to generate deployable artifact, then perform these customizations either in separate modules or somewhere else entirely. If you shared a bit more of your build environment, there might be a better way - there are plugins to provision a number of servers. Could you attach an assembly that is unpacked in the server's root? What server are you using?

Again, I'm sure there's a better way.

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.

`

Well, maven is not supposed to be good in doing fine granular tasks, it is not a scripting language like bash or ant, it is rather declarative - you say - i need a war, or an ear, and you get it. However if you need to customize how the war or ear should look like inside, you have a problem. It is just not procedural like ant, but declarative. This have some pros in the beginning, and could have a lot of cons at the end.

I guess the initial concept was to have fine plugins, that "just work" but the reality is different if you do non-standard stuff.

If you however put enough effort in your poms and few custom plugins, you'll get a much better build environment as with ant for example (depends on you project of course, but it gets more and more true for bigger projects).

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.

Another way is to bundle these things into an artifact using the assembly plugin. Then you can use the dependency plugin to unpack these files where you want. There are also copy goals in the dependency plugin to copy artifacts.

If someone wants total control over the path of the source and destination paths, then using maven-antrun-plugin's copy task is the best option. This approach will allow you to copy between any paths on the system, irrespective of the concerned paths being within the mvn project or not. I had a situation where I had to do some unusual stuff like copy generated source files from target directory back to the src directory for further processing. In my situation, this was the only option that worked without fuss. Sample code snippet from pom.xml:

<plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>1.8</version>
        <executions>
            <execution>
                <phase>process-resources</phase>
                <configuration>
                <tasks>
                    <copy file="${basedir}/target/myome/minifyJsSrcDir/myome.min.js" todir="${basedir}/src/main/webapp/app/minifyJsSrcDir"/>
                </tasks>
                </configuration>
                <goals>
                <goal>run</goal>
                </goals>
            </execution>
        </executions>
</plugin>

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.