Java: run jar with dependencies

I've packaged my mvn project.

After that, my jar files only contains my hand coded classes:

META-INF/
META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
me/
me/jeusdi/
me/jeusdi/slab/
me/jeusdi/slab/MyService.class
me/jeusdi/slab/App.class
me/jeusdi/slab/MyConfig.class
me/jeusdi/slab/MyServiceImpl.class
META-INF/maven/
META-INF/maven/me.jeusdi.slab/
META-INF/maven/me.jeusdi.slab/slab/
META-INF/maven/me.jeusdi.slab/slab/pom.xml
META-INF/maven/me.jeusdi.slab/slab/pom.properties

Nevertheless, I need declared maven dependencies:

<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/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>me.jeusdi.slab</groupId>
  <artifactId>slab</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>slab</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

  <properties>
    <kafka.streams.version>3.4.0</kafka.streams.version>
    <spring.version>6.0.5</spring.version>

    <maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
  </properties>
  
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.kafka</groupId>
        <artifactId>kafka-streams</artifactId>
        <version>${kafka.streams.version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Spring Core -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Spring Context -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>

  </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.10.1</version>
                <configuration>
                    <source>${maven.compiler.source}</source>
                    <target>${maven.compiler.target}</target>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Why spring-core dependency is not present into my jar.

I need to run my jar. Currently, I'm using:

java -cp target/slab-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar App

Any ideas about how to embed or locate my dependencies and run my application?

You can use Maven to create an uber-jar that contains all the classes.
You can as well ask Maven to download the dependencies for your.

What I usually do is to generate the jar the same as you do, but then automatically download all the dependencies into a lib folder.
To make running the jar as easy as java -jar ... I have Maven even add the classpath into the manifest.
The only drawback is that you now need to distribute the jar and it's libs in exactly this directory structure.
The advantage is that any signed jar will preserve it's signature and thus validity.

        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.2.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/dist</outputDirectory>
                <archive>
                    <manifest>
                        <addDefaultImplementationEntries>true</addDefaultImplementationEntries>
                        <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
                        <classpathPrefix>lib</classpathPrefix>
                        <mainClass>${mainclass}</mainClass>
                    </manifest>
                </archive>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.1</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <id>copy-dependencies</id>
                    <phase>package</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/dist/lib</outputDirectory>
                        <overWriteReleases>false</overWriteReleases>
                        <overWriteSnapshots>false</overWriteSnapshots>
                        <overWriteIfNewer>true</overWriteIfNewer>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>

If you want to include the jar with dependencies you could add the following

<plugin>
      <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
      <configuration>
        <archive>
          <manifest>
            <mainClass>fully.qualified.MainClass</mainClass>
          </manifest>
        </archive>
        <descriptorRefs>
          <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
        </descriptorRefs>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>

Just replace fully.qualified.MainClass in
<mainClass>fully.qualified.MainClass</mainClass>
with which ever class has main

To Build it you can run
mvn clean compile assembly:single

See https://stackoverflow.com/a/574650/5622596 for more details.

As to how to run a jar one possible way is to run the following
java -jar NameOfJar.jar
Just replace NameOfJar.jar with whichever jar you created