Samaxes Minify Maven Plugin & Eclipse - Deployment to Tomcat

I started using the Samaxes Minify Maven Plugin to minify my JavaScript and CSS files.The usage is pretty easy and I ended up with the following config in my POM

<plugin>
 <groupId>com.samaxes.maven</groupId>
 <artifactId>minify-maven-plugin</artifactId>
 <version>1.7.2</version>
 <executions>
  <execution>
   <id>default-minify</id>
   <phase>generate-resources</phase>
   <configuration>
    <charset>UTF-8</charset>
    <cssSourceDir>css</cssSourceDir>
    <cssSourceFiles>
     <cssSourceFile>x.css</cssSourceFile>
     <cssSourceFile>y.css</cssSourceFile>
     <cssSourceFile>z.css</cssSourceFile>
    </cssSourceFiles>
    <cssFinalFile>style.css</cssFinalFile>
    <jsSourceDir>js</jsSourceDir>
    <jsSourceFiles>
     <jsSourceFile>x.js</jsSourceFile>
     <jsSourceFile>y.js</jsSourceFile>
     <jsSourceFile>z.js</jsSourceFile>
    </jsSourceFiles>
    <jsFinalFile>script.js</jsFinalFile>
    <jsEngine>CLOSURE</jsEngine>
    <webappTargetDir>${basedir}/src/main/webapp</webappTargetDir>
   </configuration>
   <goals>
    <goal>minify</goal>
   </goals>
  </execution>
 </executions>
</plugin>

This worked fine when I ran 'mvn clean install' from my command line.

But I am also using Eclipse (with the whole ecosystem of  m2e / WTP / m2e-wtp) and Tomcat from within Eclipse. And I wanted to be able to publish the generated resources "script-min.js" and "style-min.css" to Tomcat using Eclipse.

Here is what I did in the end:

Did you notice the line in the plugin configuration.

<webappTargetDir>${basedir}/src/main/webapp</webappTargetDir>

By default the Minify Maven Plugin generates the resource into the 'target' folder. By setting this parameter I let the plugin generate the resources into the same folder as the source js and css files.

Now one simply has to run 'mvn generate-resources' either from the command line or from within Eclipse and then do a "Refresh" (F5) on the project and afterwards call 'Publish' on the Tomcat from within Eclipse. If Tomcat is already running it will even auto-publish the change.

This is it and this is what I do.

Note 1:

As an alternative to running 'mvn generate-resources' one can also call "Clean" on the project and let m2e rebuild it. There is just one additional thing if one want to go with this alternative: By default m2e does not execute the "Minify Maven Plugin" so you have to tell it to do so in your pom.xml:

<pluginManagement>
 <plugins>
  <plugin>
   <groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
   <artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
   <version>1.0.0</version>
   <configuration>
    <lifecycleMappingMetadata>
     <pluginExecutions>
      <pluginExecution>
       <!-- We need to add this so that m2e (maven2eclipse) will execute the minify-maven-plugin's goal 'minify' when it builds the eclipse project -->
       <pluginExecutionFilter>
        <groupId>com.samaxes.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>minify-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <versionRange>[1.0.0,)</versionRange>
        <goals>
         <goal>minify</goal>
        </goals>
       </pluginExecutionFilter>
       <action>
        <execute />
       </action>
      </pluginExecution>
     </pluginExecutions>
    </lifecycleMappingMetadata>
   </configuration>
  </plugin>
 </plugins>
</pluginManagement>

That's it.

Note 2: Within the 'm2e lifecyce mapping' configuration I also tried to set

<execute>
 <runOnIncremental≶true</runOnIncremental>
</execute>

which would generate "script-min.js" and "style-min.css" each time one made a change to any of the source js or css files. This worked nicely when I manually called 'Publish' but I encountered a problem when Tomat was running and trying to auto-publish the changes:

When I changed one of the JS/CSS files Eclipse would get into an endless loop of automatically republishing and building the project.

As I do not very often change the JS/CSS files in this project I decided it was best to go with the manual steps of running 'mvn generate-resources' (from Eclipse), refreshing by hitting F5, and then publishing.