I was wondering if anyone has tried to use the assembly plugin to merge modified configuration files with a distribution .zip from an external project output. In other words, if I had a zip file that was a distribution from another project, such as a tomcat bundle that includes a couple webapps, and I wanted to maintain a couple separate configuration files, what's the best way to merge those into that zip distribution? I'm trying to maintain these files separately for version upgrades of the external zip file.
Basically, I currently have a maven2 subproject and am using that to prepare those specific config files and then want to merge them into that zip file. I would also like to prepare the zip file by deleting a directory or two and then overwriting some files with my own. Is this something I can do with the assembly plugin? My thoughts were to unzip the 3rd party zip file, then specify that as a fileset first in my assembly descriptor, then specify my modified files second in the hopes they'll overwrite the others. I'm not sure how I would go about deleting files though. I could do some of this manually, I mean really I could prepare the other zip file manually in a minute or two, but I'm more worried about mistakes. I also want to create several versions of that zip file including different configuration files. Has anyone tried anything like this? Am I making sense? Really I just want to manipulate a 3rd party zip file from maven2, by deleting some files from it, overwriting some files and adding some dependencies from my other project to it and then zipping it back up. Thanks for any input!
