Rediscovering Maven's assembly plugin

Our team was faced with the following (actually quite simple) task: Extract all configuration files from the WAR (or rather the jars inside the war) and deploy them separately, while at the same time allowing the lazy efficient developers to just continue using mvn tomee:run like nothing changed. The reasoning behind this separate deployment was that we want to be able to change the configuration without having to rebuild the war.

Since our project is fully Maven-based, it seemed quite obvious that the solution to this must involve the assembly plugin. Personally, I had only one experience with it from a few years back, and it sure has evolved since then. Effectively, all goals except for one (+ help) have been deprecated. WOW! Nevertheless, it's still extremely powerful. So powerful that reading the documentation can lead to quite a bit of confusion and headache.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't found anything that's really missing. It's just overwhelming, because the assembly descriptor can do so many useful things.
We came up with a solution which I have outlined in a simple demo project in my GitHub account. The basic steps were:

1. Extract the config files into their own separate maven module.
2. Add this maven module as dependency with scope test where needed (this will normally be the module they were extracted from). In the example project, this is happening in modularised-webapp-library.
3. Don't add the configuration as dependency to the war project. Instead, add it as a server library to the tomee plugin as demonstrated here.
4. Create another maven module only for the assembly which has dependencies onto the war and the configuration module.
5. In the assembly descriptor, define two separate dependency sets. The one for the configuration module unpacks the configuration module and removes the maven metadata, while the one for the war only copies the war directly.

That's really it. Took us quite some effort to find this solution, but I really like the overall simplicity.

The architect is happy, because he can edit the files as he wishes without redeployment. The developers are happy, because the tomee plugin is still running the way we're used to.

(And I'm happy, because I can show off some knowledge again. ;-) )

What is your experience with building assemblies?