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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T00:44:16+00:00

I’m trying to write a maven assembly and I’m not sure how to continue.

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I’m trying to write a maven assembly and I’m not sure how to continue. It’s fairly complicated, so the examples I google don’t really help. This is what I’m trying to do:

  • Create an installation file using launch4j. This part works, assuming the jar file is correctly assembled (hence the need for a maven assembly.)
  • The installation program contains some dependencies. These are assembled (currently) using the jar-with-dependencies descriptorRef. This works as well.
  • I need to include a war file (from another project) into the big jar. This is my confusion.

How do I create an assembly.xml that will do both the jar with dependencies (unpacking all of those jar files) and include a war file from another project (which is not unpacked).

Any help would be appreciated.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    How do I create an assembly.xml that will do both the jar with dependencies (unpacking all of those jar files) and include a war file from another project (which is not unpacked).

    Assuming you have a project structure similar to the one below (I’m assuming a simple structure since you didn’t mention anything particular about it):

    .
├── pom.xml
└── src
    ├── main
    │   ├── assembly
    │   │   └── uberjar.xml
    │   └── java
    │       └── com
    │           └── stackoverflow
    │               └── App.java
    └── test
        └── java
            └── com
                └── stackoverflow
                    └── AppTest.java

    With the following pom.xml:

    <project>
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.stackoverflow</groupId>
  <artifactId>Q3762049</artifactId>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <dependencies>
    <!-- this is the war we want to include in the assembly -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.mycompany</groupId>
      <artifactId>my-webapp</artifactId>
      <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <type>war</type>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
    <!-- and below, the other dependencies -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>commons-lang</groupId>
      <artifactId>commons-lang</artifactId>
      <version>2.4</version>
    </dependency>
    ...
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.2-beta-5</version>
        <configuration>
          <descriptors>
            <descriptor>src/main/assembly/uberjar.xml</descriptor>
          </descriptors>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>make-assembly</id>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

    As you can see,

    1. We are not going to use the predefined jar-with-dependencies descriptor here, we are going to reuse it in our own custom assembly descriptor.
    2. We have a dependency declared on the war with a runtime scope so that we’ll be able to include it in the assembly.

    And now, the custom uberjar.xml:

    <assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-1.1.0.xsd">
  <id>uberjar</id>
  <formats>
    <format>jar</format>
  </formats>
  <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
  <dependencySets>
    <dependencySet>
      <unpack>true</unpack>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
      <useProjectArtifact>false</useProjectArtifact>
      <excludes>
        <exclude>*:war</exclude>
      </excludes>
    </dependencySet>
    <dependencySet>
      <unpack>false</unpack>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
      <useProjectArtifact>false</useProjectArtifact>
      <includes>
        <include>*:war</include>
      </includes>
    </dependencySet>
  </dependencySets>
  <fileSets>
    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.build.outputDirectory}</directory>
      <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>
    </fileSet>
  </fileSets>
</assembly>

    This is a little variation of the jar-with-dependencies descriptor that will create a jar:

    • the dependencies except the war, unpacked
    • the war of the webapp, not unpacked
    • the classes from the project itself

    As shown below:

    $ mvn clean package
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
...
$ cd target; jar xvf Q3762049-1.0-SNAPSHOT-uberjar.jar
  created: META-INF/
 inflated: META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
  created: org/
  created: org/apache/
  created: org/apache/commons/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/builder/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/enum/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/enums/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/exception/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/math/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/mutable/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/text/
  created: org/apache/commons/lang/time/
 inflated: META-INF/LICENSE.txt
 inflated: META-INF/NOTICE.txt
 inflated: org/apache/commons/lang/ArrayUtils.class
...
  created: META-INF/maven/
  created: META-INF/maven/commons-lang/
  created: META-INF/maven/commons-lang/commons-lang/
 inflated: META-INF/maven/commons-lang/commons-lang/pom.xml
 inflated: META-INF/maven/commons-lang/commons-lang/pom.properties
 inflated: my-webapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war
  created: com/
  created: com/stackoverflow/
 inflated: com/stackoverflow/App.class
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