The assembly descriptor

The assembly descriptor is an XML-based configuration, which defines how to build an assembly and how its content should be structured.

If we go back to our previous example, the attached goal of the assembly plugin creates a binary distribution according to the assembly descriptor, both in the test and the package phases of the default Maven lifecycle. The assembly descriptors for each phase can be specified under the descriptors element. As in the case of this particular example, there are multiple descriptor elements defined under the descriptors parent element. For the package phase, it has three assembly descriptors, as shown in the following configuration:

<descriptors>
   <descriptor>src/assembly/bin.xml</descriptor>
   <descriptor>src/assembly/src.xml</descriptor>
   <descriptor>src/assembly/docs.xml</descriptor>
</descriptors>

Each descriptor element instructs the assembly plugin from where to load the descriptor...