maven-assembly-plugin and ar archives

Question

In my maven project I want to assemble an ipkg file (This is like a Debian Package but for embedded systems). For this I need to create AR archives with the assembly plugin. In the plugin documentation I found this: "and any other format that the ArchiveManager has been configured for". But I can't find out how to "configure" the "ArchiveManager". How can I do this? Or better: Maybe someone already did this and I can use an already existing plugin?

Answer 1

Did you check the maven-pkg-plugin (mentioned here and here)?

Answer 2

If you're new to maven then it's almost "mission impossible". In theory this should work as follows:

• Implement your own Archiver.
• Provide META-INF/plexus/components.xml:

...

<component-set>
  <components>
    <component>
      <role>org.codehaus.plexus.archiver.Archiver</role>
      <role-hint>myformat</role-hint>
      <implementation>com.acme.foo.MyArchiverImplementation</implementation>
      <instantiation-strategy>per-lookup</instantiation-strategy>
    </component>
  </components>
</component-set>

• Add your artifact as a build extension.

See plexus-archiver for example.