Usually it’s very easy to create a runnable jar using Netbean’s ant plugin, but on this project im trying to utilize maven. One painfull thing is somehow maven is unable to build create a runnable jar file which included its jar dependencies.

After several minutes googling, i’ve found a very good solution. Here is the content of my pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.edw</groupId>
    <artifactId>Edw</artifactId>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <maven.compiler.source>1.7</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>1.7</maven.compiler.target>
    </properties>
    
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
            <version>2.4</version>
        </dependency>        
    </dependencies>
    
    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <phase>process-sources</phase>
                        <goals>
                            <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
                        </goals>
                        <configuration>
                            <outputDirectory>${targetdirectory}</outputDirectory>
                        </configuration>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <archive>
                        <manifest>
                            <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>                            
                            <classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>                            
                            <mainClass>com.edw.Main</mainClass>
                        </manifest>
                    </archive>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
            <plugin>
                <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.4</version>
                <configuration>
                    <descriptors>
                        <descriptor>src/main/assembly/customAssembly.xml</descriptor>
                    </descriptors>
                </configuration>
                <executions>
                    <execution>
                        <id>make-assembly</id> 
                        <phase>package</phase> 
                        <goals>
                            <goal>single</goal>
                        </goals>
                    </execution>
                </executions>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

And dont forget, adding an xml file, customAssembly.xml which located on src/main/assembly/ folder

<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly/1.1.2 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-1.1.2.xsd">
    <id>bin</id>
    <formats>
        <format>zip</format>
    </formats>
    <fileSets>
        <fileSet>
            <directory>${project.build.directory}</directory>
            <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>
            <includes>
                <include>*.jar</include>
            </includes>
        </fileSet>
        <fileSet>
            <directory>${project.build.directory}/dependency</directory>
            <outputDirectory>lib</outputDirectory>
        </fileSet>
    </fileSets>
</assembly>

Just build your application from Netbeans, and you will find a zip file on your Netbeans’ target folder, which consist of a runnable jar file and a lib folder containing your jar dependencies. 😉