Deploying Spring Boot Applications with Maven Assembly Plugin and a Custom Shell Script

This guide demonstrates a complete workflow for building and deploying a Spring Boot service. It starts by showing how to define Maven <profiles> for different environments (dev, test, uat, prod) and how to expose variables such as ${package-name} and ${boot-main} through the <properties> element.

Next, the article configures the maven-jar-plugin and maven-assembly-plugin to create a zip package that contains the compiled JAR, a conf directory with environment‑specific configuration files, and a scripts directory with a deployment script. Important plugin settings include <addClasspath>true, exclusion of resource files from the main JAR, and the <descriptor> pointing to an assembly.xml file.

The assembly.xml defines the zip structure: a lib folder for dependencies, a conf folder for configuration files, and the executable script. Nodes such as <formats>zip</formats>, <fileMode>777</fileMode>, and <filtered>true</filtered> ensure correct file permissions and variable substitution.

The core of the deployment process is the shenniu_publish.sh script. It extracts the zip, sets execution permissions, detects the running process, and provides four commands: start (supports java -cp and java -jar modes), stop, restart, and unzip. The script reads the Maven‑provided variables so no manual edits are required.

Finally, the article shows how to upload the zip to a Linux host, unzip it, and run the script (e.g., ./shenniu_publish.sh start). It also notes a common Windows‑to‑Linux line‑ending issue and provides a vim command to convert the script to Unix format. The repository URL for the full example is included.