Maven configuration: pass file inside a classpath jar as an argument

Question

Several maven plugins need/support passing a java.io.File as a configuration parameter, wherein we specify the relative/absolute location of the file for the plugin to locate and use.

Is there a way I can specify a property file in the plugin configuration where the file has to be found from inside a jar in the classpath? I'm particularly wanting this to know and use with the aspectj-maven-plugin, where I can specify the Xlintfile value to be the custom XlinkDefault.properties file location. The file, in my case, will be found inside a classpath jar.

I use maven-2.2.1 by the way.

Answer 1

No, not in general; there's no magic that will turn something that's not a file on disk into a java.io.File. Many Maven plugins (e.g., maven-checkstyle-plugin's configLocation are designed to allow more flexible input for just these cases:

This parameter is resolved as resource, URL, then file. If successfully resolved, the contents of the configuration is copied into the ${project.build.directory}/checkstyle-configuration.xml file before being passed to Checkstyle as a configuration.

As a workaround, if the plugin cannot be changed, dependency:unpack may be a way to get a classpath resource into a local file (see Maven: extract files from jar).