Building a war with dependencies in an external lib folder

Question

My war file gets really big and I would like to build it as I do for jars: packaging dependencies in a lib folder outside the war, so as to keep the war small in size. Transfer time to my server will be much improved.

I have not found a question on SA addressing this specific issue. I wonder:

• is it technically possible, or is there something in Jakarta EE which forbids this way to pack dependencies?
• if possible, is there a Maven plugin for it?

Answer 1

Jakarta EE is using a concept of installed library mechanism. Installed libraries are visible to all WAR files.

More details you can find here .

So, you can move all the JARs that are not part of your source code like Spring, Hibernate, etc. to Jakarta installed libraries and deploy a much light-weight WARs.