[jira] (ARCHETYPE-459) Ability to include empty subdirectories

["James Arlow (JIRA)" <ji...@codehaus.org>]

James Arlow created ARCHETYPE-459:
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             Summary: Ability to include empty subdirectories
                 Key: ARCHETYPE-459
                 URL: https://jira.codehaus.org/browse/ARCHETYPE-459
             Project: Maven Archetype
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: Archetypes
    Affects Versions: 2.2
         Environment: Eclipse Kepler SR1; m2e 1.4
            Reporter: James Arlow


Currently the artifact-metadata.xml will allow only allow you to include empty directories if each is explicitly specified in a unique fileset element.  It doesn't allow you to specify a folder that holds empty sub-directories with <include>**/**</include>.

Even if these empty directories are included in the /archetype-resources/ folder of the archetype.jar they will not be created from by the archetype:generate goal when the archetype is applied.

Explicitly specifying every empty directory does not scale well, in terms of simplicity and clarity of configuration.  Another user pointed out that the current behavior prevents filtered results from working properly with certain SCM situations, as well.

Since the original pom.xml is not packaged inside the archetype.jar, archetype:generate cannot be signaled to change this behavior using the plugin version or configuration pom elements, as with other optional maven features such as the resource plugin equivalent.  

Additionally, the desired behavior might differ per fileset pattern, and should not default to on, since it might corrupt the output of archetypes already deployed.

I think the best system would be to add a behavior qualifier as an attribute on the fileset pattern elements in archetype-metadata.xml:

<!-- to include empty dirs -->
<include empty-dirs="true">**/**</include>

<!-- to prevent exclusion of empty dirs -->
<exclude empty-dirs="false">**/**</exclude>

I've tested these attributes in my current archetype projects, and they do not break compatibility; they just have no effect.  Thus, they can be enabled by updating the installed version of the archetype plugin, if the features are added.



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