Cannot rename a war or jar file on a maven deploy github actions

Question

When I try to deploy a war or jar file with github actions I can't rename the war/jar file to what I want; I tried changing the name using finalName tag but that didn't work it seems when I install it before hand it gives it the proper name, however when it deploys the name defaults back to artifactId-version, is their a maven commmand that I can put into github actions in order to fix this?

here is the build tag section of my pom file I do have another build tag at the beginning of this code sample, stack overflow isn't showing it for some reason

    <sourceDirectory>WEB-INF/src</sourceDirectory>
    <pluginManagement>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>            
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                 <webXml>WEB-INF\web.xml</webXml>    
                 

                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
                <artifactId>tomcat6-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.2</version>
            </plugin>
            
            <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.2</version>
            <executions>
             <execution>
                <id>tomcat-run</id>
                <goals>
                    <goal>exec-war-only</goal>
                </goals>
                <phase>package</phase>
                <configuration>
                    <!-- optional only if you want to use a preconfigured server.xml file -->
                    <!-- <serverXml>src/main/tomcatconf/server.xml</serverXml> -->
                    <warRunDependencies>
                        <warRunDependency>
                            <dependency>
                                <groupId>a groupId</groupId>
                                <artifactId>and artifactId</artifactId>
                                <version>version</version>
                                <type>war</type>
                            </dependency>
                            <contextPath>/</contextPath>
                        </warRunDependency>
                    </warRunDependencies>
                    <!-- naming is disabled by default so use true to enable it -->
                    <enableNaming>true</enableNaming>
                    <!-- extra dependencies to add jdbc driver, mail jars, etc. -->
                    <extraDependencies>
                        <extraDependency>
                            <groupId>org.apache.derby</groupId>
                            <artifactId>derby</artifactId>
                            <version>10.1.3.1</version>
                        </extraDependency>
                        <extraDependency>
                            <groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
                            <artifactId>mail</artifactId>
                            <version>1.4</version>
                        </extraDependency>
                    </extraDependencies>
                </configuration>
            </execution>
        </executions>
        </plugin>
        </plugins>
        
    </pluginManagement>
</build>

Answer 1

Note

All depends of your pom.xml. If you are using custom plugins related to the artifact final name, it would be complicated to override the final name.

Simple Jar (maven solution)

Jar is usually used for libraries and standalone apps. After spring-boot, is used for server side apps.

According to this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/39407739/3957754 you can override the final jar name with:

mvn clean package -Djar.finalName=acmejar

I tested with this simple code and it works!

And then in your yml:

name: Java CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Set up JDK 11
        uses: actions/setup-java@v2
        with:
          java-version: '11'
          distribution: 'adopt'
      - name: Build with Maven
        run: mvn clean package -Djar.finalName=acmejar verify

Some frameworks with custom maven configurations may cause this method to not work. In that case, use some of these approaches to override the jar name using maven:

How to override maven property in command line?

War, spring-boot, etc (maven solution)

As I said, maven projects with complex plugins, needs special treatment in order to override the final artifact name.

The probed solution is to execute some operations after everything else finishes. I used Apache Maven AntRun Plugin

If I run mvn clean package in this repository, the generated war is: jersey-simple-1.0.0.war

But if I add this plugin:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <configuration>
                <tasks>
                    <copy file="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}.war" 
                        tofile="${project.build.directory}/${newName}.war"/>
                </tasks>
            </configuration>
            <goals>
                <goal>run</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

And run this: mvn clean package -DnewName=foo

A new war name is generated:

You could use the move task if you don't need to have the initial file:

<move file="file.orig" tofile="file.moved"/>

Finally add this line to your github action yml.

This is the repository with the ant run plugin.

Pure unix commands

You can run basic unix commands in Github Actions.

So if you know the initial name after the success mvn clean package, you could use the mv command to rename it:

jobs:
  docit:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - name: rename war
      run: |
        mv "${dirname}/original.war" "${dirname}/newName.war"