Issue
I have a Netbeans project with Maven that I'm trying to compile into an executable JAR file. I think so far everything works fine inside Netbeans however when I package it was a 20kb file-SNAPSHOT and couldnt get it to run.
Someone pointed me to some MAVEN code to package all dependencies and make it into a "FAT JAR" file. I did that and started getting an error "No Main Manifest Attribute" I copied some more MAVEN snippets to add the main manifest however I still get the same error "No Main Manifest" so I assume I did something wrong. Here's my POM.XML file:
<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>
<groupId>com.MyCompany</groupId>
<artifactId>Client_BoxTest</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.fazecast</groupId>
<artifactId>jSerialComm</artifactId>
<version>[2.0.0,3.0.0)</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<maven.compiler.source>14</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>14</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>
<build>
<finalName>Client-Boxtest</finalName>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.6.1</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.8</source>
<target>1.8</target>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<!-- Build an executable JAR -->
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.1</version>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
<classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>
<mainClass>my.client_boxtest.BoxTestUI</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.1</version>
<configuration>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>make-assembly</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>single</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Now I am not sure about the location of my main class: it's a fairly simple program and my tree in NetBeans looks like this, with only one file:
Solution
The maven-shade-plugin is much more powerful for create an Uber jar or fat jar and is the preferred plugin for this task for over ten years. https://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/examples/executable-jar.html describes how you should specify the mainClass.
Answered By - Robert Scholte