GWT Maven and web.xml

Question

I'm using the GWT Maven plugin from Codehaus with m2eclipse. Where is my web.xml file supposed to end up? Isn't the Maven build supposed to copy it to the /war directory? I can't see it there. Or does Jetty pick it up automatically from src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/?

Here's a relevant section from my pom.xml.

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.0.2</version>
  <configuration>
  <warSourceDirectory>war</warSourceDirectory>
  <webXml>src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml</webXml>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

Answer 1

I believe web.xml (and everything else under src/main/webapp/) gets copied into target/<projectname>-<version>/ during the normal maven lifecycle (For example, when you run mvn install).

If you're running any of the gwt-maven plugin goals, then check out this link.

When running gwt:run, if you want to run the full web app just as if you have built and deployed a war, I found the best way is to add the following to the configuration for the gwt-maven plugin:

<hostedWebapp>
            ${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}
</hostedWebapp>

This tells gwt-maven plugin to look for the web.xml (and all the other parts of the war file) under target/<projectname>-<version>/. So make sure to either run mvn install first (or mvn war:exploded), then run mvn gwt:run and you should be set.