Apache Maven Shade Plugin – Selecting Contents for Uber JAR

Selecting Contents for Uber JAR

The POM snippet below shows how to control which project dependencies should be included/excluded in the uber JAR:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <artifactSet>
                <excludes>
                  <exclude>classworlds:classworlds</exclude>
                  <exclude>junit:junit</exclude>
                  <exclude>jmock:*</exclude>
                  <exclude>*:xml-apis</exclude>
                  <exclude>org.apache.maven:lib:tests</exclude>
                  <exclude>log4j:log4j:jar:</exclude>
                </excludes>
              </artifactSet>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

Of course, <includes> can be used as well to specify a white list of artifacts. Artifacts are denoted by a composite idenitifer of the form groupId:artifactId[[:type]:classifier]. Since plugin version 1.3, the wildcard characters '*' and '?' can be used to do glob-like pattern matching.

For fine-grained control of which classes from the selected dependencies are included, artifact filters can be used:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <filters>
                <filter>
                  <artifact>junit:junit</artifact>
                  <includes>
                    <include>junit/framework/**</include>
                    <include>org/junit/**</include>
                  </includes>
                  <excludes>
                    <exclude>org/junit/experimental/**</exclude>
                    <exclude>org/junit/runners/**</exclude>
                  </excludes>
                </filter>
                <filter>
                  <artifact>*:*</artifact>
                  <excludes>
                    <exclude>META-INF/*.SF</exclude>
                    <exclude>META-INF/*.DSA</exclude>
                    <exclude>META-INF/*.RSA</exclude>
                  </excludes>
                </filter>
              </filters>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

Here, Ant-like patterns are used to specify that from the dependency junit:junit only certain classes/resources should be included in the uber JAR. The second filter demonstrates the use of wildcards for the artifact identity which was introduced in plugin version 1.3. It excludes all signature related files from every artifact, regardless of its group or artifact id.

Besides user-specified filters, the plugin can also be configured to automatically remove all classes of dependencies that are not used by the project, thereby minimizing the resulting uber JAR:

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <minimizeJar>true</minimizeJar>
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>

As of version 1.6, minimizeJar will respect classes that were specifically marked for inclusion in a filter. Note that specifying an include filter for classes in an artifact implicitly excludes all non-specified classes in that artifact.

<project>
  ...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.2.0</version>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
              <minimizeJar>true</minimizeJar>
              <filters>
                <filter>
                   <artifact>log4j:log4j</artifact>
                   <includes>
                       <include>**</include>
                   </includes>
                </filter>
                <filter>
                   <artifact>commons-logging:commons-logging</artifact>
                   <includes>
                       <include>**</include>
                   </includes>
                </filter>
              </filters>            
            </configuration>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
  ...
</project>