I do not know so good this plugin, but there is a possibility that you maybe want to consider.
Instead of the assembly plugin, use shade plugin. http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-shade-plugin/
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.2</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>shade</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<createDependencyReducedPom>false</createDependencyReducedPom>
<filters>
<filter>
<artifact>*:*</artifact>
<excludes>
<exclude>META-INF/*.SF</exclude>
<exclude>META-INF/*.DSA</exclude>
<exclude>META-INF/*.RSA</exclude>
<exclude>.settings/**</exclude>
<exclude>*.classpath</exclude>
<exclude>*.project</exclude>
<exclude>*.txt</exclude>
</excludes>
</filter>
</filters>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
And to create a whole .exe including all, or .exe which launch a .jar with all, use launch4j plugin https://github.com/lukaszlenart/launch4j-maven-plugin
<plugin>
<groupId>com.akathist.maven.plugins.launch4j</groupId>
<artifactId>launch4j-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5.2</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>l4j-gui</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>launch4j</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<headerType>gui</headerType>
<outfile>target/Project.exe</outfile>
<jar>target/${project.artifactId}-${project.version}.jar</jar>
<!-- if <dontWrapJar>true</dontWrapJar> change to this conf <jar>${project.artifactId}-${project.version}.jar</jar> -->
<dontWrapJar>false</dontWrapJar>
<errTitle>Error in launch4j plugin</errTitle>
<classPath>
<mainClass>path.Main</mainClass>
</classPath>
<icon>Project.ico</icon>
<jre>
<minVersion>1.5.0</minVersion>
<maxVersion>1.6.0</maxVersion>
<initialHeapSize>512</initialHeapSize>
<maxHeapSize>1024</maxHeapSize>
</jre>
<versionInfo>
<fileVersion>1.0.0.0</fileVersion>
<txtFileVersion>1.0.0.0</txtFileVersion>
<fileDescription>des</fileDescription>
<copyright>Copyright (c) 2014 </copyright>
<companyName>comp</companyName>
<productVersion>3.0.0.0</productVersion>
<txtProductVersion>${project.version}</txtProductVersion>
<productName>Project</productName>
<internalName>Project</internalName>
<originalFilename>Project.exe</originalFilename>
</versionInfo>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
Wow, this is great! It's like killing two birds with one bullet. Thanks! Only problem by now is that when double clicking the generated .exe file nothing happens. With command line nothing happens as well, no output is generated. Do you happen to know why?
I've figured out the problem is with the images inside my app, there is something not properly loading them. I'm getting this exception:
Could not load the icon: /images/view-refresh.png Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException. If I remove the images it loads just fine. Thanks!