Spring Boot Packaging with Maven Assembly Plugin and Shell Deployment Script

The author, a senior architect, shares a practical guide for building and deploying a Spring Boot application by combining Maven profile configurations, the maven-assembly-plugin, and a custom shell script.

1. Maven profile configuration – Define multiple profiles (node, node1, node2) in <profiles>... to specify environment‑specific properties such as activeProfile , package-name , and boot-main . These properties are later injected into the assembly descriptor and the shell script.

<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>

2. Maven plugins – Use maven-jar-plugin to customize the JAR manifest and exclude configuration files, then maven-assembly-plugin to bundle the JAR, dependent libraries, configuration files, and the shell script into a zip archive.

<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>${scripts_bootMain}</mainClass>
      </manifest>
    </archive>
    <excludes>
      <exclude>**/*.yml</exclude>
      <exclude>**/*.properties</exclude>
      <exclude>**/*.xml</exclude>
      <exclude>**/*.sh</exclude>
    </excludes>
  </configuration>
</plugin>
...
<plugin>
  <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
  <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>2.4</version>
  <configuration>
    <descriptors>
      <descriptor>${project.basedir}/src/main/assembly/assembly.xml</descriptor>
    </descriptors>
  </configuration>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <id>make-assembly</id>
      <phase>package</phase>
      <goals>
        <goal>single</goal>
      </goals>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

3. Assembly descriptor (assembly.xml) – Define the zip format, include the compiled JAR, the conf directory with environment‑specific configuration, and the shenniu_publish.sh script. Set fileMode to 777 for executable permissions and enable filtered so Maven replaces placeholders with profile values.

<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.0.0" ...>
  <id>${activeProfile}</id>
  <formats>
    <format>zip</format>
  </formats>
  <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
  <dependencySets>
    <dependencySet>
      <useProjectArtifact>false</useProjectArtifact>
      <outputDirectory>${package-name}-${activeProfile}/lib</outputDirectory>
      <unpack>false</unpack>
    </dependencySet>
  </dependencySets>
  <fileSets>
    <fileSet>
      <directory>${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>
      <outputDirectory></outputDirectory>
      <includes><include>**/*</include></includes>
      <fileMode>777</fileMode>
      <directoryMode>777</directoryMode>
      <filtered>true</filtered>
    </fileSet>
    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.build.directory}</directory>
      <outputDirectory>${package-name}-${activeProfile}/</outputDirectory>
      <includes><include>*.jar</include></includes>
    </fileSet>
  </fileSets>
</assembly>

4. Shell script (shenniu_publish.sh) – Provides functions to unzip the package, detect the running process, start the application (supporting java -cp and java -jar modes), stop the process, and restart. Parameters such as package-name , activeProfile , and boot-main are injected from Maven properties, so the script does not need manual edits.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# variable placeholders filled by Maven
languageType="javac"
baseZipName="${package-name}-${activeProfile}"
packageName="${package-name}"
mainclass="${boot-main}"
...
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 no operation" ;;
  esac
else
  echo "Usage: unzip|start|stop|restart"
fi

After building with the selected Maven profile, the resulting zip can be transferred to a Linux server, unzipped, and the script executed (e.g., ./shenniu_publish.sh start ) to launch the Spring Boot service. The article also notes converting the script to Unix line endings with vim set ff=unix if edited on Windows.