Move a text file into target folder when compiling a Maven project

A first way is to put the files into src/main/resources that is the folder devoted to store the complied resources, i.e. the resources included into the jar file (e.g. images for the icons).

If you need to make the config file to be distributed with the jar, but separated by it, you must edit the pom.xml file. A possible answer is the to add the following plugin between the <plugins> and </plugins> tags.

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.8</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <phase>test</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>run</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <tasks>
                    <echo>Using env.test.properties</echo>
                    <copy file="textfile.txt" tofile="${basedir}/target/textfile.txt"/>
                    </tasks>
                </configuration>
            </execution>
        </executions>
    </plugin>

Moreover, as you can read here you can also import all the resources from an “input” directory to an “output” directory inside target by using the dedicated plugin, e.g.:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.0.1</version>
    <executions>
         <execution>
            <id>copy-resources</id>
            <!-- here the phase you need -->
            <phase>validate</phase>
            <goals>
               <goal>copy-resources</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
               <outputDirectory>${basedir}/target/output</outputDirectory>
               <resources>          
                    <resource>
                        <directory>input</directory>
                        <filtering>true</filtering>
                    </resource>
               </resources>              
            </configuration>            
        </execution>
     </executions>
</plugin>