Reduce jar file size

Question

Is there any way to reduce jar file size?

I want a tool that reduces the unused dependencies.

I use maven for dependency management.

Answer 1

If you like to know the dependencies your project uses just check the maven-dependency-plugin which can be used to analyze the used/unused dependencies.

Check your dependencies via:

mvn dependency:analyze

or take a look at the dep tree like this:

mvn dependency:tree

Or you can take a look into your ide (depending which one you use) for example with Eclipse (Indigo) and the m2e plugin you have a tab "Dependency Hierarchy" which shows the tree of dependencies incl. the transitive dependencies.

In some situation you have to be careful about dependencies which are used by DI frameworks which can't be analyzed by maven-dependency-plugin or by ide plugins.