So...the way that you do that in Maven is to create a plugin, which is very easy to do. There's your full flexibility, as soon as you want it.
Your plugin has to play by the rules, which is a good thing.
Maven's useful for more than the beginning of a project. If you're working on real-world software, you're probably not the only person who has to understand your bespoke build, if that's the way that you've chosen to go.
The problem is that there is a large overhead associated with writing a plugin. Sometimes the things you need to do are as small as copying a file from one directory or another. Having to write a plugin to do something so small is overkill.
Does this already exist? Based on the top result I get from a Google search for 'maven copy file' [1] this seems to be not very well solved. The top response in that Stack Overflow page recommends calling out to a completely different build tool. It seems like part of the problem is that frequently you will have several plugins that each solve part of a problem but it is difficult to combine the plugins so they solve the complete problem. This seems to result in a lot more 'reinventing the wheel' because something that should be easy involves a lot of hoop jumping.
The stack overflow question is about copying files to a remote server during a build, not just copying a file to a directory. Use http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-resources-plugin/examp... — if your build copies files to a remote server you have other problems.
As far as I can tell, that question doesn't say anything about about a remote (as in on another machine) server. It sounds like the question is just about copy files to a directory outside of the Maven project.
I know that Maven is ultimately capable of being used to copy a file. However, there are multiple ways to do this because all of the options have limitations and are somewhat awkward to use. For instance, I don't think resource plugin you linked to supports renaming as part of the copy.
Why is using your build to push files to a remote server a problem? A common use would be to deploy local code to an environment that simulates production. If that cannot be done as part of the build then it will exist as scripts that exist outside of the build. This means that there will probably be a lot more 'reinventing the wheel'.
Ah, like some of the commenters, I interpreted this line:
"I have config files and various documents that I want to copy from the dev environment to the dev-server directory using Maven2."
To mean a remote dev-server and then maven-upload was mentioned in the list of solutions. Let me step back a bit.
Maven is primarily interested in the process of building. There are functions that allow deployment but generally that is not Maven's domain. Using Maven as part of your deployment process is definitely going to be at odds with a smooth experience. I think of it like making non-default choices in Ruby on Rails, you are asking for pain.
As to your point about "reinventing the wheel" for deployment using maven, I would suggest that there are many tools designed for deployment and would use those instead, like cap.
I can understand making that interpretation at first glance.
I agree that the process of building should be the primary focus of a build tool. I also, think that the secondary purpose is to make development easier. That is why you do 'rake rails' instead of having to use cap to deploy your changes locally. It's not that hard to come across a scenario that falls in to one of these goals that requires custom logic (like copying a file, or something similar). Some of this should go in custom plugins so it can be reused. However, some of it is small and non-generic and makes no sense as a plugin. The solution you pointed to for copying a file involves substantially more code to include and configure the plugin than it would take in other JVM build tools (such as SBT or Gradle) to simply specify that you want to copy a file.
I agree that doing deployment for final builds or to shared environments are better served by a different tool.
agree fully. IF you are doing something remotely common, chances are theres already a maven plugin that does it. It might have bugs, but chances are, the plugin is also opensource, so its no worse than you writing it yourself than having to fix the bug(s) you encounter.
The only reason i don't like maven is not because of its rigidity, but because of its network dependence. To use maven, you really need to run your own repository server, and that comes with huge overheads. I m warming up to the idea of always mandating offline mode in maven, and then check in to the scm a preloaded repository which includes all the libs and plugins for your project, and never have to worry about external repos, or network connectivity.
I used to be really annoyed by that too, but I'm not any more. It's _really important_ in commercial software development to understand where your code comes from. Having a local repository act as a gatekeeper does a nice job of that. It's a good idea to always have builds run where maven settings force use of a local repository. You can then easily track everything that's going into builds, and scale that up over larger numbers of projects.
You can also push libraries into the repository that aren't open source, and know that you've done so.
Running a maven repository doesn't take much. Sonatype's basic offerings are fine and quite effective.
I think that's an interesting concern, but you might be in a different enviornment than I am.
If "network dependence" is an issue for you, you could check in your ~/.m2 directory iff you don't want to run a repository server and you're deploying to many machines that have access to source control (which you probably do if you're running maven on that machine) and you don't have access to the internet. Then it's almost like a Ant 'lib' directory type of build, but with version information, docs, and sources all available if you want it and easily refreshed when you do have network access.
I thought that, then I installed nexus and let it proxy the remote repositories and really haven't looked back. Takes some time to setup (few hours). But makes life so much easier that it's well worth the effort, especially that with Java you WILL have a dependency on a 3rd party jar from Oracle that for whatever reason won't ever show up in maven central or want to include some other 3rd party repository.
Your plugin has to play by the rules, which is a good thing.
Maven's useful for more than the beginning of a project. If you're working on real-world software, you're probably not the only person who has to understand your bespoke build, if that's the way that you've chosen to go.