How to exclude dependencies from maven assembly plugin : jar-with-dependencies?

Question

Maven's assembly plugin enables the creation of a big jar including all dependencies with descriptorRef jar-with-dependencies.

How can one exclude some of these dependencies? It seems like it does not have such a configuration? Is there another solution?

Solution 1

This example indicates one way to do this:

 <dependencySets>
    <dependencySet>
      ....
      <excludes>
        <exclude>commons-lang:commons-lang</exclude>
        <exclude>log4j:log4j</exclude>
      </excludes>
    </dependencySet>
    ....
  </dependencySets>

Essentially we would use the excludes option available in dependencySet.

See also: https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-assembly-plugin/assembly-component.html

Solution 2

Add the <scope>provided</scope> to the dependencies you don't want included in the jar-with-dependencies, e.g.

    <dependency>
      <groupId>storm</groupId>
      <artifactId>storm</artifactId>
      <version>0.6.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

Solution 3

You should use the excludes option available in dependencySet.
Follow below.:

Example in your pom.xml:

...
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.3</version>
        <configuration>
          <finalName>../final/${project.artifactId}</finalName>
          <archive>
            <manifest>
              <addClasspath>false</addClasspath>
              <mainClass>com.entrerprise.App</mainClass>
            </manifest>
          </archive>
          <descriptors>
            <descriptor>src/main/resources/jar-with-deps-with-exclude.xml</descriptor>
          </descriptors>
          <appendAssemblyId>false</appendAssemblyId>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <id>make-assembly</id>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
...

Now in your new file jar-with-deps-with-exclude.xml (where dependencySet lives):

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.0.0"
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-2.0.0.xsd">
        <id>jar-with-dependencies-and-exclude-classes</id>
        <formats>
          <format>jar</format>
        </formats>
        <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
        <dependencySets>
          <dependencySet>
            <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>
            <useProjectArtifact>false</useProjectArtifact>
            <unpack>true</unpack>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
            <excludes>
              <exclude>junit:junit</exclude>
              <exclude>commons-cli:commons-cli</exclude>
              <exclude>org.apache.maven.wagon:wagon-ssh</exclude>
            </excludes>
           </dependencySet>
        </dependencySets>
        <fileSets>
          <fileSet>
            <outputDirectory>/</outputDirectory>
            <directory>${project.build.outputDirectory}</directory>
          </fileSet>
        </fileSets>
      </assembly>

That's all.

Comments

[zengr]

This gives an error: "Unrecognised tag: 'dependencySets'" for maven3

[Ravi]

This example assumes that I know where dependencySets goes in the pom.xml. A full example would have been helpful.

[Andrew T Finnell]

The issue here (after 7 yaers) is that this only goes in the assembly definition file, which is not used with 'jar-with-dependencies.'

[Shuai Liu]

Better answer than Raghuram's

[wrschneider]

This is the simplest solution and is consistent with WAR targets as well

[Guangliang]

I tried this with javafx-controls and javafx-fxml libraries in two different projects. It worked beautifully in the first project. But on the second one, it failed with the compiling many errors such as 'package javafx.beans doesn't exist'. Don't know why.

[wrschneider]

Funny to see how I upvoted this answer and now I am having a problem with provided JARs being included in the output JAR

[WesternGun]

Note that the final jar would be like app-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT-<descriptor-id>.jar, just as the original jar is app-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar. If the jar name matters, change the descriptor id to match the original.