Spring Boot Packaging with Maven Assembly Plugin and a Deployment Shell Script

The author introduces a method to package a Spring Boot application using Maven profiles to separate configuration for development, testing, UAT, and production environments. Two approaches are described: setting profile.active in application.yml and defining profiles in the Maven pom.xml . The article focuses on the latter.

In the Maven pom.xml , a <profiles> section is added with multiple <profile> entries (e.g., node , node1 , node2 ). Each profile defines properties such as activeProfile , package-name , and boot-main , and activates by default when appropriate.

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>node</id>
    <properties>
      <activeProfile>node</activeProfile>
      <package-name>${scripts_packageName}</package-name>
      <boot-main>${scripts_bootMain}</boot-main>
    </properties>
    <activation>
      <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
    </activation>
  </profile>
  ...
</profiles>

The maven-assembly-plugin and maven-jar-plugin are configured to produce a zip file that contains the compiled JAR, external configuration files, and the deployment shell script. Important plugin settings include disabling the Maven descriptor, adding a classpath entry, specifying the main class, and defining exclusion patterns for configuration files.

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.6</version>
  <configuration>
    <archive>
      <addMavenDescriptor>false</addMavenDescriptor>
      <manifest>
        <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
        <classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>
        <mainClass>${scripts_bootMain}</mainClass>
      </manifest>
    </archive>
    <excludes>
      <exclude>**/*.yml</exclude>
      <exclude>**/*.properties</exclude>
      <exclude>**/*.xml</exclude>
      <exclude>**/*.sh</exclude>
    </excludes>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <id>make-a-jar</id>
        <phase>compile</phase>
        <goals><goal>jar</goal></goals>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </configuration>
</plugin>
... (assembly plugin configuration omitted for brevity) ...

The accompanying assembly.xml defines the structure of the zip package: a formats node set to zip , file sets for the compiled JAR, configuration files, and the shell script, and permissions (fileMode and directoryMode) set to 777 . The filtered flag ensures that Maven properties are substituted into the script.

<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.0.0" ...>
  <id>${activeProfile}</id>
  <formats><format>zip</format></formats>
  <fileSets>
    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.basedir}/src/main/profiles/${activeProfile}</directory>
      <outputDirectory>${package-name}-${activeProfile}/conf</outputDirectory>
      <includes><include>**/*</include></includes>
    </fileSet>
    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.basedir}/src/main/scripts</directory>
      <fileMode>777</fileMode>
      <directoryMode>777</directoryMode>
      <filtered>true</filtered>
    </fileSet>
    ...
  </fileSets>
</assembly>

After building the zip, the author shares the shenniu_publish.sh script. The script can unzip the package, set execution permissions, detect running processes, and start, stop, or restart the Java service using either java -cp (with a specified main class) or java -jar . It also supports a placeholder for .NET Core binaries.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Variable parameters passed from Maven
languageType="javac" # java, javac, netcore
baseZipName="${package-name}-${activeProfile}"
packageName="${package-name}"
mainclass="${boot-main}"

basePath=$(cd `dirname $0`/; pwd)
baseZipPath="${basePath}/${baseZipName}.zip"
baseDirPath="${basePath}"
pid=

function shenniu_unzip() { ... }
function getPid() { ... }
function start() { ... }
function stop() { ... }

if [ ${#} -ge 1 ]; then
  case ${1} in
    "start") start ;;
    "restart") start ;;
    "stop") stop ;;
    "unzip") shenniu_unzip; start ;;
    *) echo "${1} has no action" ;;
  esac
else
  echo "Commands: unzip, start, stop, restart"
fi

To use the script on Linux, the zip is transferred to the server, unzipped (e.g., unzip -od eureka-server-0.0.1-node eureka-server-0.0.1-node.zip ), and the file format is converted to Unix line endings with vim ( set ff=unix ). After that, the script can be executed with commands such as ./shenniu_publish.sh start , and it will start the Spring Boot service, displaying logs or indicating success/failure.

The article concludes with a link to the GitHub repository containing the full project and a call for readers to follow, like, and share the content.