Excluding “provided” dependencies from Maven assembly

Question

I am trying to use the Maven assembly plugin to build a jar-with-dependencies, except those that have provided scope.

I have copied the jar-with-dependencie

Answer 1

This is a bit clunky, but you can use the maven-dependency-plugin to copy/unpack all the dependencies into your project, then use the assembly plugin to do the packaging.

The copy-dependencies and unpack-dependencies goals both have an optional excludeScope property you can set to omit the provided dependencies. The configuration below copies all dependencies into target/lib, your assembly plugin descriptor can be modified to use a fileSet to include those jars.

Update: Just tested this to confirm it works. Added the configuration for binding the assembly plugin to the package phase, and the relevant modifications to the assembly descriptor.

  org.apache.maven.plugins
  maven-dependency-plugin
  
    
      copy-dependencies
      process-resources
      
        copy-dependencies
      
      
        provided
        ${project.build.directory}/lib
      
    
  


  maven-assembly-plugin
  2.2-beta-4
  
    
      jar-with-deps
      package
      
        single
      
    
  
  
    
      src/main/assembly/my-assembly.xml
    
  

The fileSet section of the my-assembly descriptor would look like this:

  
    
      ${project.build.directory}/lib
      /
      
        *.*
      
    
  
...