Combining jars for multi modules maven project in a single jar

Question

I have a parent maven project that includes some child projects and a build/assembly project. The structure looks like this

ParentProj
    + pom.xml 
    + ChildProj1
        ++   pom.xml
    + ChildProj2
     ++   pom.xml
    + buildProj
     ++   pom.xml

I want to create an executable jar in the build project, or project that contains all child project jars. Basically the final result should be a jar that includes all child project jars in the classpath.

Answer 1

Your project buildProj should have the other child projects declared as dependencies, you could then configure the maven assembly plugin to use the predefined descriptor jar-with-dependencies which create a jar that contains the dependencies.

• How can I create an executable JAR with dependencies using Maven?.
• https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/descriptor-refs.html

EDIT If you wish to add the dependencies jar in your jar, you could use something like onejar:

• Creating a JAR file which contains other library files
• http://one-jar.sourceforge.net/

There is a maven plugin for this tool: https://code.google.com/p/onejar-maven-plugin/