maven-shade-plugin : exclude a dependency and all its transitive dependencies

Run "shade" from within a profile, and mark your dependency as provided only in that profile. For example:

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>shadeProfile</id>
        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>com.example</groupId>
                <artifactId>some-artifact</artifactId>
                <version>1.23</version>
                <scope>provided</scope>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>
        <build>
            <plugins>
                <plugin>
                    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                    <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
                    <version>2.3</version>
                    <executions>
                        <execution>
                            <phase>package</phase>
                            <goals>
                                <goal>shade</goal>
                            </goals>
                            <configuration>
                                <shadedClassifierName>shaded</shadedClassifierName>
                            </configuration>
                        </execution>
                    </executions>
                </plugin>
            </plugins>
        </build>
    </profile>
</profiles>

When you run mvn -PshadeProfile package it will treat your dependency as provided (and thus omit its dependencies), and it will use the classifier "shaded" so you can use this as a dependency in other modules.

I tried following configuration, and it worked for me also:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.1.0</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>shade</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
    <configuration>
        <finalName>client-${artifactId}</finalName>
        <filters>
            <filter>
                <artifact>*:*</artifact>
                <excludes>
                    <exclude>META-INF/*</exclude>
                </excludes>
            </filter>
        </filters>
        <artifactSet>
            <excludes>
                <exclude>org.apache.jmeter:*</exclude>
                <exclude>com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:*</exclude>
                <exclude>com.fasterxml.jackson.module:jackson-module-scala_2.11:*</exclude>
            </excludes>
        </artifactSet>
    </configuration>
</plugin>