Distribute plugin resource files to host project

Question

I have a maven plugin that exposes a Mojo, with a goal that runs at the compile stage. The project was generated using mvn archetype:generate, and the POM contains all the standard stuff that comes with running that, very little deviation. The project includes a couple of resource files, e.g. filea.txt and fileb.txt, that are packaged up as part of the jar.

When the plugin is used in a project, I'd like the files that are included in the jar to be extracted and copied to the target\test-classes directory of the host project. I'm trying to use the plugin jar to both distribute some files + expose some functionality that can then use those files.

Is this a valid approach, and if so, are there settings I can add to the plugin POM to indicate that content from the plugin should be extracted and copied? I want to centralise this logic in the plugin, rather than having to do in the plugin host.

I feel like it's something with maven-dependency-plugin or maven-resources-plugin or build-helper-maven-plugin:attach-artifact, have tried a couple of different approaches but think I'm missing something obvious:

e.g. something like this in plugin POM?

  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-clean-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.1.0</version>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.2</version>
      <configuration>
        <outputDirectory>${basedir}/target/test-classes</outputDirectory>
        <resources>
          <resource>
            <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
            <includes>
              <include>filea.txt</include>
              <include>fileb.txt</include>
            </includes>
          </resource>
        </resources>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.0</version>
    </plugin>
    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-plugin-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.6.0</version>
    </plugin>
    // etc etc

Google fu has let me down, keep ending up on maven resources page. Can post directory structure / more information if needed.

Cheers

Answer 1

First I would suggest to put resources which needs to be distributed into src/main/resources which looks like you have done ...but remove the configuration for the maven-resources-plugin and let maven do it's work. This is automatically copied into target/classes/ which in result is packaged into the resulting jar later.

If your plugin needs to get those files those can accessed as a usual resource via this.getClass().getResourcesAsStream("/...") and reading and writing them into a new location preferable into target/...