Question: I am developing a web application using Spring Boot, and want to generate war instead of jar.

It works very fine using the conversion from jar to war described here : <http://spring.io/guides/gs/convert-jar-to-war/>

But I want to exclude the application.properties from the war, because I use `@PropertySource(value = "file:${OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR}/application.properties")` to get the file path on production environment.

* This method works when generating my war, but in eclipse I can't run my application because application.properties not copied at all to target/classes :

```
<build>
    <resources> 
        <resource> 
            <directory>src/main/resources</directory> 
            <excludes> 
                <exclude>application.properties</exclude> 
            </excludes> 
        </resource> 
     </resources> 
</build>

```
* This method doesn't work at all, I think that spring-boot-maven-plugin doesn't support packagingExcludes :

```
<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration> 
                <packagingExcludes>WEB-INF/classes/application.properties</packagingExcludes> 
            </configuration> 
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

```

Have you another suggestion?

Thanks

Answer: 
Try using the solution below. This will work:

```
<build>
    <resources>
         <resource>
            <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
            <filtering>true</filtering>
            <excludes>
                <exclude>**/*.properties</exclude>
            </excludes>
        </resource>
    </resources>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

```

If you are using the above solution , while running the project in Eclipse IDE you may get error that the properties file is not found. To get rid of this you need to add the resources folder in Run as configuration.(Run configurations... -> Classpath -> User Entries -> Advanced... -> Add Folders)
What I understand from your question is, you want to use application.properties for your development. But you dont want to use it for production.

I would suggest using **Spring profiles** to achieve this.
In your properties file 

1. Create a profile for development. Put all your development properties under it.
2. Do not create a profile for production in your properties file.
3. When you are developing, set active profile to development, so that the properties are loaded from your **application.properties** file.
4. When you run it in production, set active profile to Production. Though application.properties will be loaded into your WAR, since there is no profile for production, none of the properties will be loaded.

I have done something similar using YML. I am sure there must be a way to do the same thing using `.properties` file too.

```
spring:
  profiles.active: development
--
spring:
  profiles: development
something:
  location: USA
  unit1: Test1
  unit2: Test2

```

You could change the profile in run time using

```
-Dspring.profiles.active=production

```