I'm in in the thought process of MNG-6080 and MNG-5567, and I have an idea to run by the dev folks here:
A ZIP file is a type of resource. A resource artifact gets a new scope to remain in the reactor but does not contribute to the compiling process or runtime environment. It's up to the build to determine how to consume it (via some other mechanism like input into a plugin). But is a ZIP artifact really any different from any other kind of non-functional artifact? What about text files, markdown files, or any other kind of non-code resource you want to share and use? One such thought of mine was people who want to deploy OSS license files. Instead of keeping a static copy in a project for distribution bundling, it could be part of a project dependency and added. I am pretty sure there are Maven plugins specifically built for this -- but are these plugin to workaround the absence of native functionality? So the big philosophical question is... If a ZIP file is just a resource, then perhaps it's not a new Maven "zip" type that should be supported... it should be a new Maven "resource" type that can be any kind of file. Thoughts? Cheers, Paul
