How to add a dependency to a Spring Boot Jar in another project?

By default, Spring Boot repackages your JAR into an executable JAR, and it does that by putting all of your classes inside BOOT-INF/classes, and all of the dependent libraries inside BOOT-INF/lib. The consequence of creating this fat JAR is that you can no longer use it as a dependency for other projects.

From Custom repackage classifier:

By default, the repackage goal will replace the original artifact with the repackaged one. That's a sane behaviour for modules that represent an app but if your module is used as a dependency of another module, you need to provide a classifier for the repackaged one.

The reason for that is that application classes are packaged in BOOT-INF/classes so that the dependent module cannot load a repackaged jar's classes.

If you want to keep the original main artifact in order to use it as a dependency, you can add a classifier in the repackage goal configuration:

<plugin>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
  <version>1.4.1.RELEASE</version>
  <executions>
    <execution>
      <goals>
        <goal>repackage</goal>
      </goals>
      <configuration>
        <classifier>exec</classifier>
      </configuration>
    </execution>
  </executions>
</plugin>

With this configuration, the Spring Boot Maven Plugin will create 2 JARs: the main one will be the same as a usual Maven project, while the second one will have the classifier appended and be the executable JAR.

Tunaki's answer is correct but doesn't work in Spring Boot 2.

Spring Boot 1.x

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.5.20.RELEASE</version>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>repackage</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
          <classifier>exec</classifier>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>
    ...
  </plugin>

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---

Spring Boot 2.x

If you are using spring-boot-starter-parent, the repackage goal is executed automatically in an execution with id repackage. In that setup, only the configuration should be specified as shown in the following example:

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <id>repackage</id>
        <configuration>
          <classifier>exec</classifier>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>
    ...
  </plugin>

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For Spring Boot 2 @Tunaki's answer must be modified a bit according to the documentation if spring-boot-starter-parent is used as parent :

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <id>repackage</id>
        <configuration>
          <classifier>exec</classifier>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>

Take note of the extra <id>repackage</id> necessary to overwrite to execution from the spring-boot-starter-parent.