Spring Boot Packaging with Maven Assembly Plugin and Deployment via Shell Script

This article explains how to package a Spring Boot application into a zip file using Maven's maven-assembly-plugin and maven-jar-plugin, configure environment‑specific profiles, and deploy the artifact on a Linux server with a custom shell script named shenniu_publish.sh.

Profiles for environment configuration

Define profiles in pom.xml to separate configuration files for development, testing, UAT, and production.

Activate a profile via -P<profile-id> or by setting spring.profiles.active in application.yml.

Maven assembly plugin configuration

The assembly descriptor ( assembly.xml) specifies the files to include in the zip, such as configuration directories, scripts, and the built jar. Key nodes include: formats: output format (zip). fileMode: set executable permission (777) for the script. filtered: replace Maven properties (e.g., ${package-name}) inside the script.

Example snippet of assembly.xml:

<assembly xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/ASSEMBLY/2.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/assembly-2.0.0.xsd">
  <id>${activeProfile}</id>
  <formats>zip</formats>
  <fileMode>777</fileMode>
  <includeBaseDirectory>false</includeBaseDirectory>
  <fileSets>
    <fileSet>
      <directory>${project.basedir}/src/main/assembly/${activeProfile}</directory>
      <outputDirectory>${package-name}-${activeProfile}</outputDirectory>
      <includes>
        <include>**/*</include>
      </includes>
    </fileSet>
  </fileSets>
</assembly>

Shell script shenniu_publish.sh

The script provides commands to unzip the package, start, stop, restart, and check the status of the Spring Boot jar. It reads parameters passed from Maven properties, sets execution permissions, and supports three launch modes: java -cp, java -jar, and netcore.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Variable definitions (filled by Maven)
languageType="javac"   # java, javac, netcore
baseZipName="${package-name}-${activeProfile}"
packageName="${package-name}"
mainclass="${boot-main}"
# Paths
basePath=$(cd $(dirname $0); pwd)
baseZipPath="${basePath}/${baseZipName}.zip"
baseDirPath="${basePath}"
# Functions
function shenniu_unzip() { ... }
function getPid() { ... }
function start() { ... }
function stop() { ... }
# Main entry
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: ./shenniu_publish.sh {start|stop|restart|unzip}"
fi

Usage steps

Build the project with the desired profile: mvn clean package -Puat.

The assembly plugin creates ${package-name}-${profile}.zip containing the jar, configuration files, and shenniu_publish.sh.

Transfer the zip to the Linux server and unzip: unzip -od <target-dir> <zip-file>.

Convert the script to Unix line endings if edited on Windows: vim shenniu_publish.sh → :set ff=unix → :wq.

Run the script: ./shenniu_publish.sh start to launch the service, or use stop, restart, unzip as needed.

The article concludes that once the script runs without errors, the Spring Boot service can be managed efficiently, and the source code is available in a Git repository for further exploration.