Maven stand alone jars with shared code dependencies

Question

I'm just ramping up on Maven so perhaps somewhat rookie questions. I've found various pieces to my puzzle but yet to find a clear doc on how to achieve the following.

I have some common java code which I want to share between two java applications. I've set this up using maven modules as follows:

Root Dir
    pom.xml
    shared_code
       pom.xml
       src
           ...
    app1
       pom.xml
       src
           ...
    app2
       pom.xml
       src
           ...

The pom.xml file in the dir is simple and mainly consists of

<packaging>pom</packaging>
  <modules>
  <module>shared_code</module>
  <module>app1</module>
  <module>app2</module>
</modules>

The pom.xml in the shared_code subfolder just uses maven-compiler-plugin and <packaging>jar</packaging> to create a jar file.

The pom.xmls in the app subfolders use

maven-compiler-plugin
maven-jar-plugin
maven-dependency-plugin

and mark the shared_code module as a dependency.

This works okay, but I'm failing to achieve some goals. Firstly, my resources are a mess. I can't get resources from the shared_code to automagically be available to the apps. Secondly, this creates for me a jar file for each app which contains only the classes for the app. In a subfolder (in the generated target folder) I get all the dependency jars, including the shared_code one.

Could someone explain how to achieve the following please

Resources from shared_code are automagically deployed and made available to the apps. For bonus points, can the apps override the resources somehow?
How do I create a single jar file rather than a jar with a subfolder full of dependencies?
How do I create an executable rather than a jar?

For other bonus points, please feel free to tell me I'm approaching the problem in a non-canonical way and completely correct me.

What kind of resources would like to put into your shread_code ? property files? — khmarbaise, Apr 07 '17 at 06:21

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

1

For the shared resources I would use Maven Remote Resources Plugin
For creating a jar containing other dependencies & being executable you would need to create a so called Fat Jar

This should give you some hint on how to achieve your goals. To explain everything in the answer would explode the topic I think.

Maybe you can ask followup question regarding the two topics as a separate if you need further help besides the hints I gave.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:46

Community

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1

answered Apr 07 '17 at 05:50

JDC

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Thanks. This is just the sort of answer I like. I just need a point in the right direction :) Will look into this and get back with comments or more questions. – Andrew Parker Apr 07 '17 at 14:23

Maven stand alone jars with shared code dependencies

1 Answers1