Exploded war files gives the webapp project rapid testing capability, war files can be deployed in the web container in exploded form.

War file generation of large webapp projects normally take time, using the exploded goal can speed up the processing of the war by only updating the modified files or resources on the exploded war.

Default Phase ( recommended )

package

Basic Usage

To explicitly execute the goal

  m2 war:exploded

or with the added configuration line on your pom.xml

  <project>
          ...
          <build>
             <plugins>
               <plugin>
                 <groupId>org.apache.maven</groupId>
                 <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                 <version>2.1</version>     
                 <goals>
                   <goal>exploded</goal>
                 </goals>    
               </plugin>
             <plugins>  
             ...
             ...
          </build>   
          ...
  </project>

specifying the package phase would achieve the same result

  mvn package

Sample Configuration

Given the project structure

   /project_root
   /project_root/pom.xml
   /project_root/src/main/java/package/source
   /project_root/src/main/resource/someresource
   /project_root/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/anotherwebsource    
   /project_root/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/somewebsource  
   /project_root/src/main/webapp/websources

with pom.xml

   <project>
      <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
      <groupId>com.somecompany.webapp<gropuId>
      <artifactId>webapp-service</artifactId>
      <version>0.0</version>
      <packaging>war</packaging>
      <name>Some Company Webapp Service</name>
      <dependencies>
         <dependency>
            <groupId>com.closed.package</groupId>
            <artifactId>runtimedependency</artifactId>
            <version>0.0</version>
            <scope>runtime<scope>
         </dependency>
         <dependency>
            <groupId>com.closed.package</groupId>
            <artifactId>normaldependency</artifactId>
            <version>0.0</version>
            <!-- if no scope is defined, it defaults to compile -->
         </dependency>
      </dependencies>     
   </project>

executing the command

   mvn war:exploded

would assemble the exploded webapp on "target/webapp-service"

 target/webapp-service/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
 target/webapp-service/META-INF/maven/org.apache.maven.repository/maven-repository-webapp/pom.xml
 target/webapp-service/META-INF/maven/org.apache.maven.repository/maven-repository-webapp/pom.properties
 target/webapp-service/WEB-INF/lib/runtimedependency-0.0.jar
 target/webapp-service/WEB-INF/classes/<generated classes from "src/main/java">
 target/webapp-service/WEB-INF/jsp/anotherwebsource
 target/webapp-service/WEB-INF/somewebsource             
 target/webapp-service/websources

You might wonder why the other dependency is not included in WEB-INF/lib, only dependencies with a runtime scope are included in the war file.