How to Create an Executable JAR with Maven

In this quick article we will focus on packaging a Maven project into an executable Jar file. In order to create an executable jar, we don’t need any additional dependencies. We just need to create Maven Java project, and have at least one class with the main(…) method.

We also need to make sure that our pom.xml contains the the following elements:

<build>
    <finalName>anjus-invoicing-${project.version}</finalName>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <descriptorRefs>
                    <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                </descriptorRefs>
                <appendAssemblyId>false</appendAssemblyId>
                <archive>
                    <manifest>
                        <mainClass>com.rolandopalermo.example.Main</mainClass>
                    </manifest>
                </archive>
            </configuration>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>make-assembly</id>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>assembly</goal>
                    </goals>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>