Here is how I have integrated my maven builds with myeclipse.

Install the maven integration for eclipse - http://m2eclipse.codehaus.org/

Create a new Maven project (File -> New -> Project -> Maven -> Maven Project)

Set your packaging to war, and check off "/src/main/webapp" in the Project Layout section.

Once the project is created, right click, and go to Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries -> Add Library -> MyEclipse Libraries,
click Next and select J2EE 1.x or Java EE 5 libraries

Now, shutdown Eclipse and open up the .project file in your favourite text editor.

Now, I modified the .project file to add the MyEclipse natures back in. (Make sure to change the <name> node value to your project name)

<!-- START -->

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <projectDescription>    <name>SampleWeb</name>  <!-- this is your project name -->    <comment></comment>    <projects>    </projects>    <buildSpec>       <buildCommand>          <name>org.maven.ide.eclipse.maven2Builder</name>          <arguments>          </arguments>       </buildCommand>       <buildCommand>          <name>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javabuilder</name>          <arguments>          </arguments>       </buildCommand>       <buildCommand>          <name>com.genuitec.eclipse.j2eedt.core.J2EEProjectValidator</name>          <arguments>          </arguments>       </buildCommand>       <buildCommand>          <name>com.genuitec.eclipse.j2eedt.core.DeploymentDescriptorValidator</name>          <arguments>          </arguments>       </buildCommand>       <buildCommand>          <name>org.eclipse.wst.validation.validationbuilder</name>          <arguments>          </arguments>       </buildCommand>       <buildCommand>          <name>com.genuitec.eclipse.ast.deploy.core.DeploymentBuilder</name>          <arguments>          </arguments>       </buildCommand>    </buildSpec>    <natures>       <nature>com.genuitec.eclipse.ast.deploy.core.deploymentnature</nature>       <nature>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javanature</nature>       <nature>org.maven.ide.eclipse.maven2Nature</nature>       <nature>com.genuitec.eclipse.j2eedt.core.webnature</nature>    </natures> </projectDescription> <!-- END -->

Now, open up eclipse, right click on the project, and go to Properties -> MyEclipse -> Web -> ContextRoot and set your context root.
You'll notice that the Web-root folder is still set to /WebRoot so this has to be changed.
Go back to your filesystem, and open up your ".mymetadata" with your text editor. Change this:

<attributes>
<attribute name="webrootdir" value="/WebRoot" />
</attributes>

to this:

<attributes>
<attribute name="webrootdir" value="/src/main/webapp" />
</attributes>

Now, you have to restart MyEclipse again. Almost there, just a few more steps.

Create WEB-INF, WEB-INF/lib and WEB-INF/classes directories under /src/main/webapp and put in your web.xml file.

Right click on your project, go to Properties -> Java Build Path -> Source and set your output folder to /src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/classes

Now you're ready to go. You can deploy your web project to a server, and you can also do your maven builds.

stiggs this really kicks ass man, thanks for taking the time to post it. I'll mark it as sticky for other folks that are curious.

No problem, it would be nice if in a future release, this could be automated.

stiggs - have you tried the q4e plugin? i'm just getting started with it myself and the deploy issues I'm running into may necessitate similar metadata hacking, but the dependency analysis/view features are oh-so-delicious.

I haven't even heard of q4e until now. THere aren't enough hours in the day to keep learning all this new stuff. I find what I have now is sufficient. The dependancy graphing looks kinda cool, but I tend to use a lot of the same libraries and I already know what their dependancies are, or I don't really care :-) Maybe I'll post a message one of these days describing all the project files that get created, and how to modify them.