When using the maven assembly plugin, can I specify a descriptor in the configuration node (or similar) inside the pom file, instead of having to create an assembly.xml file?
All I need it to include jar files in a directory (and its subdirectories) which I can specify in one line with something like <include>**/*.jar</include>
Also, I need to ask developers in other projects to do this, and that's why I'd prefer to not have a separate file, and just ask them to include this when they configure the plugin.
The short answer - you can't. However you can put your assembly plugin configuration and this descriptor into the parent pom used by all projects in your team, so other developers won't have to do that again.