Plugin Documentation

Goals available for this plugin:

Goal Description
assembly:assembly Assemble an application bundle or distribution using an assembly descriptor from the command line. This goal will force Maven to build all included POMs up to the package phase BEFORE the assembly is processed.
NOTE: This goal should ONLY be run from the command line, and if building a multimodule project it should be used from the root POM. Use the assembly:single goal for binding your assembly to the lifecycle.
assembly:attached Deprecated. Use goal: 'assembly' (from the command line) or 'single' (from a lifecycle binding) instead.
assembly:directory Like the assembly:attached goal, assemble an application bundle or distribution using an assembly descriptor from the command line. This goal will force Maven to build all included POMs up to the package phase BEFORE the assembly is processed. This goal differs from assembly:assembly in that it ignores the <formats/> section of the assembly descriptor, and forces the assembly to be created as a directory in the project's build-output directory (usually ./target).
This goal is also functionally equivalent to using the assembly:assembly goal in conjunction with the dir assembly format.
NOTE: This goal should ONLY be run from the command line, and if building a multimodule project it should be used from the root POM. Use the assembly:directory-single goal for binding your assembly to the lifecycle.
assembly:directory-inline Deprecated. Use goal: 'directory' (from the command line) or 'directory-single' (from a lifecycle binding) instead.
assembly:directory-single Like the assembly:attached goal, assemble an application bundle or distribution from an assembly descriptor. This goal is suitable either for binding to the lifecycle or calling directly from the command line (provided all required files are available before the build starts, or are produced by another goal specified before this one on the command line).
This goal differs from assembly:single in that it ignores the <formats/> section of the assembly descriptor, and forces the assembly to be created as a directory in the project's build-output directory (usually ./target).
assembly:help Display help information on maven-assembly-plugin.
Call 
 mvn assembly:help -Ddetail=true -Dgoal=<goal-name>
to display parameter details.
assembly:single Assemble an application bundle or distribution from an assembly descriptor. This goal is suitable either for binding to the lifecycle or calling directly from the command line (provided all required files are available before the build starts, or are produced by another goal specified before this one on the command line).
assembly:unpack Deprecated. Use org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-dependency-plugin goal: unpack or unpack-dependencies instead.

System Requirements

The following specifies the minimum requirements to run this Maven plugin:

Maven 2.0.6
JDK 1.4
Memory No minimum requirement.
Disk Space No minimum requirement.

Usage

You should specify the version in your project's plugin configuration:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <!-- To define the plugin version in your parent POM -->
    <pluginManagement>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
          <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.2-beta-4</version>
        </plugin>
        ...
      </plugins>
    </pluginManagement>
    <!-- To use the plugin goals in your POM or parent POM -->
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.2-beta-4</version>
      </plugin>
      ...
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

For more information, see "Guide to Configuring Plug-ins"