title: Maven: assembly-plugin is not run at all
body: <p>I am pretty new to Maven, tried to learn a couple of times before and figured I was better off without Maven. Now, (un)fortunately I have to use Maven in a project I'd like to contribute to. My problem at this point is regarding the packaging. I'd like to produce a self-contained (aka "fat") jar with all dependencies included, and a colleague who's played around with Maven helped me out with the pom file. </p>
  
  <p>I have checked his pom files, as well as samples here on SO. The xml looks legit but the plugin is not run at all. Note that I get no errors, everything goes fine except I get no "fatjar". Any ideas what might be the cause of this problem? </p>
  
  <p>Below is the relevant portion of the pom.xml. I have seen contradicting code samples with regards to positioning of <code>&lt;configuration&gt;</code> and <code>&lt;executions&gt;</code> tags, tried pretty much every variation I have found, still no joy.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;plugin&gt;
    &lt;artifactId&gt;maven-assembly-plugin&lt;/artifactId&gt;
    &lt;version&gt;2.3&lt;/version&gt;
    &lt;executions&gt;
      &lt;execution&gt;
          &lt;id&gt;make-jar-with-dependencies&lt;/id&gt; &lt;!-- this is used for inheritance merges --&gt;
          &lt;phase&gt;package&lt;/phase&gt; &lt;!-- bind to the packaging phase --&gt;
          &lt;goals&gt;
              &lt;goal&gt;single&lt;/goal&gt;
          &lt;/goals&gt;
      &lt;/execution&gt;
    &lt;/executions&gt;
    &lt;configuration&gt;
      &lt;finalName&gt;ProjectName&lt;/finalName&gt;
      &lt;appendAssemblyId&gt;true&lt;/appendAssemblyId&gt;
      &lt;descriptorRefs&gt;
        &lt;descriptorRef&gt;jar-with-dependencies&lt;/descriptorRef&gt;
      &lt;/descriptorRefs&gt;
      &lt;archive&gt;
        &lt;manifest&gt;
          &lt;mainClass&gt;org.mydomain.ProjectName&lt;/mainClass&gt;
          &lt;addClasspath&gt;true&lt;/addClasspath&gt;
        &lt;/manifest&gt;
      &lt;/archive&gt;
    &lt;/configuration&gt;
  &lt;/plugin&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>Edit_1</strong> the console output from <code>mvn clean package</code> as asked by @khmarbaise</p>
  
  <pre><code>[INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-clean-plugin:2.4.1:clean (default-clean) @ myproject ---
  [INFO] Deleting /home/user/workspace/project/target
  [INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.5:resources (default-resources) @ myproject ---
  [debug] execute contextualize
  [WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
  [INFO] Copying 41 resources
  [INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3.2:compile (default-compile) @ myproject ---
  [WARNING] File encoding has not been set, using platform encoding UTF-8, i.e. build is platform dependent!
  [INFO] Compiling 292 source files to /home/user/workspace/project/target/classes
  [INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-resources-plugin:2.5:testResources (default-testResources) @ myproject ---
  [debug] execute contextualize
  [WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
  [INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory /home/user/workspace/project/src/test/resources
  [INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-compiler-plugin:2.3.2:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ myproject ---
  [INFO] Nothing to compile - all classes are up to date
  [INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-surefire-plugin:2.10:test (default-test) @ myproject ---
  [INFO] No tests to run.
  [INFO] Surefire report directory: /home/user/workspace/project/target/surefire-reports
  
  -------------------------------------------------------
   T E S T S
  -------------------------------------------------------
  Results :
  Tests run: 0, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
  [INFO] 
  [INFO] --- maven-jar-plugin:2.3.2:jar (default-jar) @ myproject ---
  [INFO] Building jar: /home/user/workspace/project/target/myproject-2.0.jar
  [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  [INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
  [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  [INFO] Total time: 12.210s
  [INFO] Finished at: Thu Jun 07 11:45:14 CEST 2012
  [INFO] Final Memory: 18M/184M
  [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
  </code></pre>