This mode is similar to the exploded mode but the war will ge generated in the webapp source tree.

Default Phase ( recommended )

package

Basic Usage

To explicitly execute the goal

  m2 war:inplace

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>inplace</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:inplace

or specifying the lifecycle phase package

   mvn package

would generate the exploded webapp in the source tree

 src/main/webapp
 src/main/webapp/META-INF/maven/com.somecompany.webapp/webapp-service/pom.xml
 src/main/webapp/META-INF/maven/com.somecompany.webapp/webapp-service/pom.properties
 src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/lib/runtimedependency-0.0.jar
 src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/<contents of target/classes>
 src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/anotherwebsource
 src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/somewebsource           
 src/main/webapp/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.

If you use the lifecycle phase invocation, it will also generate the war - "target/webapp-service.war".