maven war plugin put my resources in war root directory

Question

I don't understand why when I put the webResources entry in the maven-war-plugin, the resources are placed in the war root directory. I think it should put only in WEB-INF/classes. This is my maven-war-plugin configuration:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.2</version>
    <!-- <configuration> <webXml>target/web.xml</webXml> </configuration> -->
    <configuration>
       <webResources>
            <resource>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>dbre.xml</exclude>
                </excludes>
                <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
            </resource>
        </webResources>
        <archive>
            <manifest>
                <addDefaultSpecificationEntries>true</addDefaultSpecificationEntries>
            </manifest>
        </archive>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

If I delete <webResources> entry, only default src/main/resources files are copied to WEB-INF/classes but isn't in root war directory.

Answer 1

This is the expected behaviour. Quoting maven-war-plugin documentation:

The WAR Plugin is also capable of including resources not found in the default resource directory through the webResources parameter.
...
external-resource2.jpg and image2 are copied to the root of the WAR, preserving the directory structure.

And later:

By default web resources are copied to the root of the WAR

If you want to override the default target path, you can specify the <targetPath> attribute. For example, if you want the web resources to be located inside WEB-INF, you would configure the plugin like this:

<webResources>
  <resource>
    <excludes>
      <exclude>dbre.xml</exclude>
    </excludes>
    <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
    <targetPath>WEB-INF</targetPath>
  </resource>
</webResources>