Maven can't find web.xml
<p>I'm getting the following error when building my maven-project with the command <code>mvn clean install</code></p>

<pre><code>[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin:2.2:war
(default-war) on project MyProject:
Error assembling WAR: webxml attribute is required (or pre-existing 
WEB-INF/web.xml if executing in update mode)
</code></pre>

<p>I do have web.xml in the project. In the folder <code>web/WEB-INF/web.xml</code></p>

<p>I am using IntelliJ IDEA. I can avoid this problem by adding the following to pom.xml:</p>

<pre><code>&lt;build&gt;
    &lt;plugins&gt;
        &lt;plugin&gt;
            &lt;groupId&gt;org.apache.maven.plugins&lt;/groupId&gt;
            &lt;artifactId&gt;maven-war-plugin&lt;/artifactId&gt;
            &lt;configuration&gt;
                &lt;failOnMissingWebXml&gt;false&lt;/failOnMissingWebXml&gt;
            &lt;/configuration&gt;
        &lt;/plugin&gt;
    &lt;/plugins&gt;
&lt;/build&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>But I'd like to know why maven claims that web.xml is missing even though it's not and it is in the default location when creating a new web application project in IntelliJ IDEA.</p>