maven embed dependency artifact code in jar - maven

Question

I have a multi-module maven project. I have a main "base-code" module which creates a jar of all the compiled source code in my project.
I have another module, "executable", which creates an executable jar from the same source code. To avoid duplication I want to pull the classes in from the "base-code" module.
I thought that all I had to do was make the "base-code" module a dependency of the "executable" module to do this. But I just get an empty jar. What am I doing wrong?
(my "executable" pom is below)
<project>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<parent>
<groupId>com.myproject/groupId>
<artifactId>myproject</artifactId>
<version>1</version>
</parent>
<artifactId>executable</artifactId>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.myproject/groupId>
<artifactId>code-base</artifactId>
<version>1</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.4</version>
<configuration>
<finalName>runnable</finalName>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>com.myproject.Main</mainClass>
<addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
<classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>

Answer 1

What you are looking for is probably uber-jar: a single jar file with all embedded jar dependencies, the newly version of maven-assembly-plugin support this as one of the 4 pre-defined descriptor, check out here.
Try using maven-assembly-plugin replace your maven-jar-plugin like this:
<!-- Create single executable jar with all dependencies unpacked and embedded -->
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>com.myproject.Main</mainClass>
<addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
<classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>
</manifest>
</archive>
<descriptorRefs><descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef></descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals><goal>single</goal></goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
Alternatively, you can also use maven-shade-plugin to do this.
Hope that helps.