How to rid latest Eclipse (2021-03) of MANIFEST.MF (No such file or directory) error? - eclipse

Question

Over the last few years, for our Parent POM project in Eclipse, I've had to employ slightly different tweaks to Eclipse's configuration, to avoid having Eclipse give errors like:
...target/classes/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF (No such file or directory) pom.xml
I know I can manually rid these errors, by right-clicking the parent project and doing
Maven > Update Project
but that only works until the next build when I do another "clean install".
In the past, I got Eclipse to stop complaining by making these 2 Eclipse tweaks:
Preferences > Maven > check "Automatically update Maven projects configuration (experimental)"
Preferences > Maven > Java EE Integration > uncheck "Maven Archiver generates files under the build directory".
But, this no longer work, with the latest versions of Eclipse (e.g., Version: 2021-03).
Why does Eclipse do this and how can I rid myself of this annoyance, once and for all?

Answer 1

I found a solution.
The problem is caused by the standard maven-compiler-plugin. When it generates a JAR file, it deletes target/classes/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF.
Eventually (but not right away), Eclipse notices this and complains that the manifest file is missing.
Cleaning the project (as often recommended in related Stack Overflow questions) is not a solution. Although it makes the errors go away temporarily, the errors will soon return, the next time maven-compiler-plugin generates another JAR file.
A permanent solution is to include this additional plugin to my POM, which not just generates a manifest file, but KEEPS it at target/classes/META-INF/MANIFEST.MF:
...
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-bundle-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.3.0</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>bundle-manifest</id>
<phase>compile</phase>
<goals>
<goal>manifest</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<archive>
<index>true</index>
<manifest>
<addDefaultSpecificationEntries>false</addDefaultSpecificationEntries>
<addDefaultImplementationEntries>false</addDefaultImplementationEntries>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
...
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
...
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
...
</plugin>
</plugins>
...
</build>
...