Create an executable FatJar in Gradle

Fat Jar is also know as uber jar which consists of all the classes along with the dependencies required to the run the application.

Setup build.gradle

plugins {
    id 'java'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile jackson_libraries.core
    compile jackson_libraries.databind
    compile jackson_libraries.annotations
}

Override the default JAR task

By default jar task build jar without any dependencies, we will override the behavior of the jar task by adding a few lines of code in the build.gradle which will include all the dependencies to the jar.

jar {
    manifest {
        attributes "Main-Class": "in.asvignesh.MainClass"
    }

    from {
        configurations.compile.collect { it.isDirectory() ? it : zipTree(it) }
    }
}

The final gradle file will look like

plugins {
    id 'java'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    compile jackson_libraries.core
    compile jackson_libraries.databind
    compile jackson_libraries.annotations
}

jar {
    manifest {
        attributes "Main-Class": "in.asvignesh.MainClass"
    }

    from {
        configurations.compile.collect { it.isDirectory() ? it : zipTree(it) }
    }
}

Now running the jar will generate the executable jar with the dependencies.

Also published on Medium.