This is a sure way to waste precious developer time. IDEA allows to configure for jars of a war file to be packaged to "/". However without also checking the option "Allow to copy a (sic) packaged files outside the exploded directory or jar" this simply does not have any effect at all. What the heck is the purpose of an option that basically says "Yup, really do what I told you on another settings page and do not just ignore it". If there's a reason for this checkbox, then please at least provide a big fat warning that my deployment configuration is invalid if the option is off, but files are configured to be packaged outside.