Creating Uber Jars with Shade

To create your shaded (uber) jar, you just need to declare the shade plugin in your pom.xml. With regards to installation of the shade plugin, simply declaring it in the plugins section of your pom.xml is all you need do. Maven plugins are not installed manually, but are automatically downloaded by Maven (if not already downloaded; just like dependencies), stored in your local repository, and used whenever a project needs them. As to using it, much like other plugins, declare it in your pom.xml by adding a element with your configuration needs. This plugin does nothing automatically (some do, some don't) - you have to specify which "goal" to execute (think "method of a class"), and in which "phase" (think "step" of the build process). Unless you have strange needs, specify the "shade" goal in the "package" phase (see below). For more configuration possibilities, see the shade usage page, and their examples (especially selecting contents for uber jar). Here is a simple example which, when you run mvn package, replaces your original jar in the target/ directory with the uber jar. It only includes the runtime dependencies, not the ones used at test time (notice the element of the junit dependency, which is not included in the uber jar).