Exclude META-INF directory from war

I know my question may seem odd, but how can I exclude whole meta-inf directory from war? I tried:

<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3</version>
<configuration>
    <warSourceDirectory>WebContent</warSourceDirectory>
    <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
    <webResources>
        <resource>
            <directory>WebContent</directory>
            <excludes>
                <exclude>META-INF/**</exclude>
            </excludes>
        </resource>
    </webResources>
</configuration>

I also tried:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.3</version>
    <configuration>
        <warSourceDirectory>WebContent</warSourceDirectory>
        <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
        <packagingExcludes>META-INF/*</packagingExcludes>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

The reason why I need this is because I'm trying to generate an archive which will be a kind of a patch for a deployed application - so I don't want to overwrite unnecessary files.

Add the following configuration in your war plugin:

    <plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
      <version>3.2.2</version>
      <configuration>
        <archive>
          <addMavenDescriptor>false</addMavenDescriptor>
        </archive>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>

source - https://maven.apache.org/shared/maven-archiver/index.html https://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-archive-configuration.html