Onejar-maven-plugin collects your application including dependencies, into one executable jar. It's both easy and works well! (UPDATED for version 1.3.0. See below.) It lets all your dependency jars stay jars, and your code is in its own jar. All of those jars are put in a bigger jar, which is made executable.

Configuration

It may sound weird, but it's quite elegant! Just put this in your pom.xml's <plugins> tag to make it work:[...]