maven-shade-plugin won't include dependencies

Question

I have an infuriating problem. I am trying to use maven-shade-plugin to pack my spring mvc app with an embedded tomcat server into a single jar. I've already tried a similar task. Tried to use a similar configuration in my pom file as once worked for me. Unfortunately after packing the jar only contains the classes I have created. The manifest does mention all the dependencies. I thought that this might be a problem with Maven, but tried on another project, and the plugin seems to work fine. Here are relevant fragments of my POM:

<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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.wojto</groupId>
  <artifactId>wmcase</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>WMcase Maven Webapp</name>

    <properties>
        <springframework.version>5.2.3.RELEASE</springframework.version>
        <springsecurity.version>5.1.4.RELEASE</springsecurity.version>
        <tomcat.version>9.0.30</tomcat.version>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>

        <maven.compiler.source>1.8</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>1.8</maven.compiler.target>
    </properties>

(...)

    <build>
        <finalName>wmcase</finalName>

        <pluginManagement>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>3.2.1</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <createDependencyReducedPom>true</createDependencyReducedPom>
                        <filters>
                            <filter>
                                <artifact>*:*</artifact>
                                <excludes>
                                    <exclude>META-INF/*.SF</exclude>
                                    <exclude>META-INF/*.DSA</exclude>
                                    <exclude>META-INF/*.RSA</exclude>
                                </excludes>
                            </filter>
                        </filters>

                    </configuration>

                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <phase>package</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>shade</goal>
                            </goals>
                            <configuration>
                                <shadedArtifactAttached>true</shadedArtifactAttached>
                                <transformers>
                                    <transformer
                                            implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ServicesResourceTransformer" />
                                    <transformer
                                            implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
                                        <manifestEntries>
                                            <Main-Class>com.wojto.wmcase.application.Application</Main-Class>
                                        </manifestEntries>
                                    </transformer>
                                </transformers>
                            </configuration>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>

                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>3.8.1</version>
                    <configuration>
                        <source>1.8</source>
                        <target>1.8</target>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
                    <configuration>
                        <archive>
                            <manifest>
                                <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
                                <classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>
                                <mainClass>com.wojto.wmcase.application.Application</mainClass>
                            </manifest>
                        </archive>
                    </configuration>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </pluginManagement>

    </build>
</project>

Answer 1

Remove the tag <pluginManagement></pluginManagement> and keep the rest than this will work.

The trick is simply cause pluginManagement is as the name implies for the management of the plugins which is usually the version and sometimes configuration. This means plugins define in pluginManagement will never being executed.

If you like to have plugins which being executed use <plugins></plugins>

see also the documentation: http://maven.apache.org/pom.html