maven-jetty-jspc-plugin keepSources takes affect only in packageRoot but not in other directories. e.g if configuration has: <configuration> <packageRoot>${pom.groupId}.webapp.jsp</packageRoot> only *.java under: \target\classes\${pom.groupId}\webapp\jsp*.java are deleted but not: \target\classes\${pom.groupId}\webapp\jsp\otherDirectory*.java The same if packageRoot is not defined. It doesn't work for tags either which are even more those are compiled into org\apache\jsp\tag\web directory ignoring packageRoot.