maven-war-plugin how to exclude provided jar from lib directory but include in manifest with prefix folder

Question

I am trying to build a skinny war for later inclusion in a large ear file. The ear build is entirely separate to my war's project and expects me to provide a skinny war, with the correct manifest file, the ear promises to supply provided jars in its root /libs folder.

Problem I am facing is getting the war's manifest.mf file to specify that provided jar's are in the ear's /libs folder, and compile/runtime jars are in the war. i.e. the manifest.mf class-path entry wants to look like this:

Class-Path: libs/commons-lang.jar commons-codec.jar

commons-lang is scoped to provided and expected to be in the ear's libs directory.

commons-codec is compile time and expected to be part of the war.

I've explored maven-war-plugin but can't figure out how to get it to supply the classpathPrefix for just the provided dependencies.

Suggestions please?

---

The final adopted solution (thanks to all with tips and links) Requires the dependencies provided by ear be scoped to provided and this, noticed the hack: fake-application.xml :

 <plugin>
    <!--required to fix the war's manifest and skinny the war-->
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-ear-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.10.1</version>
    <configuration>
        <defaultLibBundleDir>lib/</defaultLibBundleDir>
        <skinnyWars>true</skinnyWars>
        <generateApplicationXml>true</generateApplicationXml>
        <applicationXml>${project.basedir}/src/test/fake-ear/fake-application.xml</applicationXml>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <phase>verify</phase>
            <goals><goal>ear</goal></goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
 </plugin>

I then deploy this new skinny war to the repository and did so using the maven deploy plugin:

<plugin>
    <!--used in release build to deploy skinny war to nexus-->
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-deploy-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.8.2</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>deploy-file</id>
            <phase>install</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>deploy-file</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <!--location of the skinny war after maven-ear-plugin builds it-->
                <file>${project.build.directory}/${project.artifactId}-${project.version}/${artifactid}-${project.parent.version}.war</file>
                <repositoryId>releases</repositoryId>
                <url>${distributionManagement.repository.url}</url>
                <groupId>${project.parent.groupId}</groupId>
                <artifactId>${artifactid}</artifactId>
                <version>${project.parent.version}</version>
                <packaging>war</packaging>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

Answer 1

@Tunaki's maven-ear-plugin suggestion seems better in a holistic manner, but anyway take a look: https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/examples/executable-jar.html

You can modify the manifest this way:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.4.3</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <transformers>
                <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
                  <manifestEntries>
                    <Class-Path>libs/commons-lang.jar commons-codec.jar</Class-Path>
                  </manifestEntries>
                </transformer>
              </transformers>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>