[MASSEMBLY-925] Detailed error message on assembly failure

**[Christian Domsch](https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?name=cdomsch)** opened **[MASSEMBLY-925](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MASSEMBLY-925?redirect=false)** and commented

If the assembly fails during processing of its dependencySets/fileSets, it would be very convenient to get the current set/item it is trying to work on while it fails.

I just lost about a couple days worth of tracking down, why my assembly failed with the message: "Failed to create assembly: Error creating assembly archive base: archive is not a ZIP archive -> [Help 1]"
Long story short, in our package feed (we are building our software in Azure) one dependency that we used had a corrupt ZIP archive. Since this assembly is the final one we use to build our installers, it contains 50 dependencySets and some files and filesets. Which means, tracking down which of those was causing the issue while one build roughly takes 40mins, is very time consuming.

In order to improve this, it would be very helpful, if in the event of an error, the plugin would tell you which module/dependency/file it actually failed on.

---

**Affects:** 3.2.0

**Issue Links:**
- [COMPRESS-515](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COMPRESS-515) Add fileName/path info to ZipFile constructor IOException
(_**"is blocked by"**_)

**Remote Links:**
- [GitHub Pull Request #22
](https://github.com/apache/maven-assembly-plugin/pull/22)

0 votes, 6 watchers

Start by tracing assembly processing for dependencySets and fileSets and the failure that produces the assembly archive error. Review the linked GitHub pull request for the work already attempted; done should include the module, dependency, or file being processed in the reported failure.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.