web-inf vs WEB-INF with Maven WAR plug-in

[Joe Gilvary]

Hi,

We're converting our project layout to use Maven and I'm running into some difficulties. I can't seem to find clear, comprehensive documentation on the Maven WAR plugin, so I'm hoping someone here can share some expertise.

Does the WAR plug-in generate the web.xml file? I ask because I keep getting errors related to the content of an <env-entry> element even after I have corrected the issue in the sources from my "resources" directory.

In the WAR created by Maven (building on Win32) I have both a "web-inf" and a "WEB-INF" directory. When I deploy to Unix, these are going to be separate directories, unless the SUN Appserver8 is a lot smarter about deploying than I have a right to expect it to be. When I search the sources (again, on Win32) I can't find a directory that uses the lower-case name, and that's why I'm wondering if the WAR plug-in is doing some sleight of hand. I know that Win32 might be showing me the "wrong" filename, but it shows only uppercase "WEB-INF" in all the sources.

BTW, does anyone know where the actual spec for the content and format of the WAR file is? I had believed that the spec calls for the use of "WEB-INF" in all capitals, but I can't confirm that by checking the latest J2EE and Servlet specs.

Thanks for any and all help with these questions,

Joe

[Tim Holloway]

Microsoft Windows displays names in a case-sensitive manner, but searches in a case-insensitive manner. So if you were to unzip a unix-created ZIP file with both a web-inf AND a WEB-INF into the same containing directory, the results would be a combination of both directories into a single directory and I'd rather not find out what the capitalization of the winner was.

Just to make it more fun, even under Windows, the Java file services are case-sensitive, except in cases where they can't be because the OS has made it impossible. So mind your case in ALL filenames and directories, regardless of OS!

The proper capitalization for a WAR is WEB-INF - all upper case, For any JAR, you'd also find metadata in META-INF. The web.xml file's name is all lower case. The JAR manifest should be META-INF/MANIFEST.MF, although I've seen some leniency on capitalization here.

Although the J2EE spec should spell out the structure of a WAR definitively, I picked up my info off the docs on the jakarta Tomcat site.