Maven: Making Jars With Dependencies: Example From Book Doesn't Work - maven

Question

I am a complete beginner with Maven. I've been following the book Maven By Example. In the section 6.13 the author demonstrates making a JAR with the dependencies included via the command
mvn install assembly assembly
I followed the example in chapter 6, except I skipped the parts with unit testing. I went back through them to make sure I didn't skip a step. However when I tried the above command I got this error output:
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.3.2:jar (default-jar) # simple-weather ---
[INFO]
[INFO] <<< maven-assembly-plugin:2.2-beta-5:assembly (default-cli) # simple-weather <<<
[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-assembly-plugin:2.2-beta-5:assembly (default-cli) # simple-weather ---
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 2.094s
[INFO] Finished at: Wed Mar 21 15:53:03 EDT 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 5M/10M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-assembly-plugin:2.2-beta-5:assembly (default-cli) on project simple-weather: Error readi
ng assemblies: No assembly descriptors found. -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoExecutionException
C:\home\Projects\simple-weather>
The problem is with the jar-with-dependencies descriptor in the plugins section. I googled around a bit, but didn't find a different way to do it from the book. So, I would be interested to know where I am going wrong.
Here is my pom.xml:
<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/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>org.sonatype.mavenbook.custom</groupId>
<artifactId>simple-weather</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<name>simple-weather</name>
<url>http://www.sonatype.com</url>
<licenses>
<license>
<name>Apache 2</name>
<url>http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt</url>
<distribution>repo</distribution>
<comments>A business-friendly OSS license</comments>
</license>
</licenses>
<organization>
<name>Sonatype</name>
<url>http://www.sonatype.com</url>
</organization>
<developers>
<developer>
<id>jason</id>
<name>Jason Van Zyl</name>
<email>jason#maven.org</email>
<url>http://www.sonatype.com</url>
<organization>Sonatype</organization>
<organizationUrl>http://www.sonatype.com</organizationUrl>
<roles>
<role>developer</role>
</roles>
<timezone>-6</timezone>
</developer>
</developers>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>log4j</groupId>
<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
<version>1.2.14</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>dom4j</groupId>
<artifactId>dom4j</artifactId>
<version>1.6.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>jaxen</groupId>
<artifactId>jaxen</artifactId>
<version>1.1.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>velocity</groupId>
<artifactId>velocity</artifactId>
<version>1.5</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>junit</groupId>
<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
<version>3.8.1</version>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3.2</version>
<configuration>
<source>1.5</source>
<target>1.5</target>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
</project>
Thanks much in advance for any clues.

Answer 1

The problem is you have your descriptor refs configured for the compile plugin instead of the assembly plugin.
Add this to your /build/plugins section
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.3</version>
<configuration>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
</plugin>
and remove the below from your compiler plugin config as it is not doing anything.
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>