Spring does not find messages.properties

Question

I'm working on a maven project using Spring framework.

Instead of writing raw text in JSPs I prefer to use <spring:message .../> tag and register my messages in a .properties file.

I get this warning when requesting a page :

ResourceBundle [messages] not found for MessageSource: Can't find bundle for base name messages, locale fr

Which then brings an exception about the message not being found (obviously).

Here's my project's hierarchy :

my project's hierarchy

Here's my springapp-servlet.xml :

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
   xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-4.3.xsd
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-3.0.xsd
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
                       http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd">

<context:component-scan base-package="app.core" />

<bean id="viewResolver"
      class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
    <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/">
    </property>
    <property name="suffix" value=".jsp">
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.SessionLocaleResolver">
    <property name="defaultLocale" value="fr" />
</bean>

<bean id="messageSource"
      class="org.springframework.context.support.ResourceBundleMessageSource">
    <property name="basenames">
        <list>
            <value>messages</value>
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

<mvc:resources mapping="/public/**" location="/WEB-INF/resources/"
               cache-period="31556926"/>

<mvc:annotation-driven />

</beans>

Answer 1

From the documentation:

The basenames follow ResourceBundle conventions: essentially, a fully-qualified classpath location. If it doesn't contain a package qualifier (such as org.mypackage), it will be resolved from the classpath root.

(emphasis mine)

So it should be under src/main/resources.