Provide Deployment Descriptor File

The default deployment descriptor files are:

  • src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml for war projects.
  • target/application.xml for ear projects.
  • src/main/resources/META-INF/ejb-jar.xml for ejb projects.

In cases where you want to provide your own descriptor files or if the descriptor files are located somewhere else, you can use the following on the command-line:

mvn idea:idea -DdeploymentDescriptorFile=src/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml

For a multiproject setup, where you'll want to have different values for this parameter for projects that use it, you should put the configuration values in their respective poms like so:

<project>
  [...]
  <build>
    [...]
    <plugins>
      [...]
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-idea-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <deploymentDescriptorFile>src/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml</deploymentDescriptorFile>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      [...]
    </plugins>
    [...]
  </build>
  [...]
</project>