Creating Two Executable Jars Using maven-assembly-plugin

Question

I have a Maven project and I want to create two executable jar files from it. One will be used interactively by users and a second will be run as a scheduled job that reads the

Answer 1

So as soon as I posted this, I found this thread:

Create multiple runnable Jars (with depencies included) from a single Maven project

This uses a different approach in that it doesn't use two profiles, it uses two executions, as such:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>build-publisher</id>
            <configuration>
                <appendAssemblyId>false</appendAssemblyId>
                <archive>
                    <manifest>
                        <mainClass>fully.qualified.path.Publisher</mainClass>
                    </manifest>
                </archive>
                <descriptorRefs>
                    <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                </descriptorRefs>
                <finalName>${project.artifactId}</finalName>
            </configuration>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
        <execution>
            <id>build-logReader</id>
            <configuration>
                <appendAssemblyId>false</appendAssemblyId>
                <archive>
                    <manifest>
                        <mainClass>fully.qualified.path.LogReader</mainClass>
                    </manifest>
                </archive>
                <descriptorRefs>
                    <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
                </descriptorRefs>
                <finalName>${project.artifactId}-logReader</finalName>
            </configuration>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

This seems to be working. The moral of the story seems to be that I don't completely understand profiles or when they should be used.