How to build executable JAR with Maven in Spring Boot

By Atul Rai | Last Updated: February 26, 2019 Previous       Next

In this tutorial, we will learn how to build executable JAR with Maven in Spring Boot application. Spring Boot provides spring-boot-maven-plugin to create or build an executable JAR of your Spring Boot application.

Follow the below steps to build executable JAR:

Step 1: Go to your Spring Boot application and open the pom.xml file.

Step 2: Mention the packing type in the pom.xml file

<packaging>jar</packaging>

and add the below spring-boot-maven-plugin code just below the closing dependencies </dependencies> tag.

<build>
	<plugins>
		<plugin>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
		</plugin>
	</plugins>
</build>

Step 3: Now run the mvn clean package command. If you are using STS/Eclipse IDE, then Right Click on your project » Run As » Maven build… » Goals: clean package » Run.

Step 4: Step 3 will create an executable JAR file of your Spring Boot application and put it within the target folder.

Step 5: Run the executable JAR, using the following Java command.

java -jar target/<your-jar-name>.jar

For your reference, I have attached my complete pom.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
	<parent>
		<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
		<version>2.1.3.RELEASE</version>
		<relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
	</parent>
	<groupId>org.websparrow</groupId>
	<artifactId>springboot-exe-jar</artifactId>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
	<name>springboot-exe-jar</name>

	<!-- define the packaging type -->
	<packaging>jar</packaging>

	<properties>
		<java.version>1.8</java.version>
	</properties>
	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
		</dependency>

		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
			<scope>test</scope>
		</dependency>
	</dependencies>

	<!-- Spring boot maven plugin to create executable JAR -->
	<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
				<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
			</plugin>
		</plugins>
	</build>

</project>

References

1. Creating an Executable Jar
2. Spring Boot Maven Plugin