[MSOURCES-25] Allow additional source directories to be configured

• Type: New Feature
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.3
• Assignee: Milos Kleint
• Reporter: Benjamin Bentmann
• Created: 28/Oct/07 05:22
• Updated: 25/Nov/14 15:38
• Resolved: 25/Nov/14 15:38

Description

Currently, the plugin simply archives the compile source roots and resource directories that are known to the POM. However, there may exist further files which do not directly contribute to the build process but are nevertheless to be considered as "source" files.

For example, consider a project with the following directories:

• src/main/java
• src/main/javacc
• src/main/jflex
• src/main/uml

The directories "javacc" and "jflex" provide grammar definitions for generated java files while "uml" contains UML (or similar) models from which MDA tools create java files. I would consider it useful to package these "pre-source" files as well into the sources JAR.

Surely, the assembly-plugin would do the job but since it requires quite a complete build I consider this approach quite unattractive when I want to package up files that are already hanging around in the file system.

While adding more directory roots to the archive is in principle no big deal for the source-plugin, the major question would be how to nicely configure the plugin to do so. My spontaneous proposal would be an additional configuration parameter "sourceDirectories" of type File[] with the following semantic:
If not specified (as would be the case for all currently existing configurations), simply package compile source roots and resources from POM like it does now. If I understand mojo configuration correctly, the mojo parameter would be null in this case.
Otherwise (i.e. if POM configuration contains <sourceDirectories> element), ONLY those directories listed up here should be packaged. This would allow precise control what the plugin packages. For example, if one does not want to package resources, simply omit to list up their root directory. For my formerly mentioned example, one would need to write:

<sourceDirectories>
  <sourceDirectory>src/main/java</sourceDirectory>
  <sourceDirectory>src/main/javacc</sourceDirectory>
  <sourceDirectory>src/main/jflex</sourceDirectory>
  <sourceDirectory>src/main/uml</sourceDirectory>
</sourceDirectories>

(BTW, not sure whether Plexus can actually handle the non-standard plural form ending with "ies").

Of course, things are not that simple... The above illustrated approach conflicts with the current solution for MSOURCES-22. Furthermore, the plugin is currently aware of includes/excludes for the resources being packaged. This cannot be realized by a simple configuration parameter of type File[], i.e. <sourceDirectory>src/main/resources</sourceDirectory> would not be equivalent to the default behavior, causing confusion. Therefore, one might need something like a SourceDirectory bean that holds the directory path and optional includes/excludes (similar to an Ant fileset).

Issue Links

• relates to: MSOURCES-38 Add zip goal to create a source zip containing all sources