Artifact bundles are created with the Maven Repository Plugin. For more information about the Maven Repository plugin, see http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-repository-plugin/.

Example 16.1, “Sample POM Containing all Required Bundle Elements”, lists a project's POM which satisfies all of the constraints that are checked by the Maven Repository plugin. The following POM contains, a description and a URL, SCM information, and a reference to a license. All of this information is required before an artifact bundle can be published to the Central Maven repository.

<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>com.sonatype.sample</groupId>
  <artifactId>sample-project</artifactId>
  <packaging>jar</packaging>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <name>sample-project</name>
  <description>A Sample Project for the Nexus Book</description>
  <url>http://books.sonatype.com</url>
  <licenses>
    <license>
      <name>The Apache Software License, Version 2.0</name>
      <url>http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt</url>
      <distribution>repo</distribution>
    </license>
  </licenses>
  <scm>
    <connection>
      scm:git:git://github.com/sonatype/sample-project.git
    </connection>
    <url>scm:git:git://github.com/sonatype/sample-project.git</url>
    <developerConnection>
      scm:git:git://github.com/sonatype-sample-project.git
    </developerConnection>     
  </scm>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.1</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

To create a bundle from a Maven project, run the repository:bundle-create goal. This goal will check the POM to see if it complies with the standards for publishing a bundle to a public repository, it will then bundle all of the artifacts are generated by a particular build. To build a bundle that only contains the standard, unclassified artifact from a project, run mvn repository:bundle-create. To generate a bundle which contains more than one artifact, run mvn javadoc:jar source:jar repository:bundle-create.

~/examples/sample-project$ mvn javadoc:jar source:jar repository:bundle-create
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'javadoc'.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building sample-project
[INFO]    task-segment: [javadoc:jar, source:jar, repository:bundle-create]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] [javadoc:jar {execution: default-cli}]
Loading source files for package com.sonatype.sample...
Constructing Javadoc information...
Standard Doclet version 1.6.0_15
Building tree for all the packages and classes...
...
[INFO] Preparing source:jar
[INFO] No goals needed for project - skipping
[INFO] [source:jar {execution: default-cli}]
...
-------------------------------------------------------
 T E S T S
-------------------------------------------------------
Running com.sonatype.sample.AppTest
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.03 sec

Results :

Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0

[INFO] [jar:jar {execution: default-jar}]
[INFO] Building jar: ~/temp/sample-project/target/sample-project-1.0.jar
[INFO] [repository:bundle-create {execution: default-cli}]
[INFO] The following files are marked for inclusion in the repository bundle:

0.) Done
1.) sample-project-1.0.jar
2.) sample-project-1.0-javadoc.jar
3.) sample-project-1.0-sources.jar

Please select the number(s) for any files you wish to exclude, or '0' when \
you're done.  Separate the numbers for multiple files with a comma (',').

Selection: 
0
[INFO] Building jar: ~/temp/sample-project/target/sample-project-1.0-bundle.jar
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 11 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Sat Oct 10 21:24:23 CDT 2009
[INFO] Final Memory: 36M/110M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once the bundle has been created, there will be a bundle JAR in the target/ directory. As shown in the following command output, the bundle JAR contains: a POM, the project's unclassified artifact, the javadoc artifact, and the sources artifact.

~/examples/sample-project$ cd target
~/examples/sample-project/target$ jar tvf sample-project-1.0-bundle.jar 
     0 Sat Oct 10 21:24:24 CDT 2009 META-INF/
    98 Sat Oct 10 21:24:22 CDT 2009 META-INF/MANIFEST.MF
  1206 Sat Oct 10 21:23:46 CDT 2009 pom.xml
  2544 Sat Oct 10 21:24:22 CDT 2009 sample-project-1.0.jar
 20779 Sat Oct 10 21:24:18 CDT 2009 sample-project-1.0-javadoc.jar
   891 Sat Oct 10 21:24:18 CDT 2009 sample-project-1.0-sources.jar