pomPropertiesFile does not actually permit override

The What

My understanding is that the pomPropertiesFile configuration element will allow you to override the default pom.properties file that is created by the maven-archiver when addMavenDescriptor is true. I wanted to use this feature to include some Hudson build data into the pom.properties file. We already have utility classes that read version information from this file, so it wasn't a leap to add some build-server information to this same file.

From the Maven Archiver Reference page:

pomPropertiesFile

Use this to override the auto generated pom.properties file (only if addMavenDescriptor is set to true)

File

2.3

My Expectations

So my assumption is that I can provide a customized pom.properties file that will be written/copied to the {{META-INF/maven/" + $

+ "/" + $

+ "/pom.properties}} file.

The Actual Result

The File I pass to the pomPropertiesFile element is actually overwritten with the default pom.properties file format. One could say it is overriding my override. Maybe I am misunderstanding this configuration element altogether, I can't see how it can possibly be helpful the way that it is behaving right now...

Background Information

I am witnessing this behaviour with the apache war plugin:

<plugin>
	<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
	<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
	<version>2.1-beta-1</version>
	<configuration>
	<archive>
		<addMavenDescriptor>true</addMavenDescriptor>
		<pomPropertiesFile>configurations/custom-pom.properties</pomPropertiesFile>
	</archive>
	</configuration>
</plugin>

And here is my customized properties file that I want used to replace the default pom.properties content:

version=$\{pom.version\}
groupId=$\{pom.groupId\}
artifactId=$\{pom.artifactId\}
buildTag=${BUILD_TAG}
buildNumber=${BUILD_NUMBER}
buildId=${BUILD_ID}

I see from my Maven output that maven-war-plugin-2.1-beta-1 uses maven-archiver-2.4:

...
[DEBUG] Plugin dependencies for:

org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin:2.1-beta-1

are:

org.apache.maven:maven-plugin-api:jar:2.0.6:runtime
org.apache.maven:maven-artifact:jar:2.0.6:runtime
org.apache.maven:maven-archiver:jar:2.4:runtime
org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-archiver:jar:1.0-alpha-9:runtime
org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-io:jar:1.0-alpha-1:runtime
com.thoughtworks.xstream:xstream:jar:1.3.1:runtime
org.codehaus.plexus:plexus-utils:jar:1.5.5:runtime
org.apache.maven.shared:maven-filtering:jar:1.0-beta-2:runtime
...
[DEBUG] Configuring mojo 'org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin:2.1-beta-1:war' -->
[DEBUG]   (s) addMavenDescriptor = false
[DEBUG]   (s) pomPropertiesFile = /SOME_PATH/configurations/custom-pom.properties
...

MavenArchiver#createArchive(...)

I notice that the createArchive(...) method ALWAYS writes the standard/default pom.properties contents to the supplied file. That provides no benefit.

If I can offer a suggestion:

1. get the pomPropertiesFile configuration property.
   • if the property is not null and the property maps to an existing file
     1. archiver.addFile( pomPropertiesFile, "META-INF/maven/" + groupId + "/" + artifactId + "/pom.properties" );
   • else the file property was null
     1. Create the temporary maven-archiver folder
     2. Create a ref to the maven-archiver/pom.properties file
     3. Call PomPropertiesUtil#createPomProperties