Creating an uber JAR

This may or may not sound familiar, but once upon a time, long ago, developers would compile their code, run scripts to assemble the binary bits into ZIP files, and drag them into applications that would ultimately result in burning a CD or staging the file on some retro artifact such as a tape drive or jumbo hard drive.

Then, they would lug that artifact to another location, be it a vaulted room with special access control or an entirely different facility on the other end of town.

This sounds like something out of a post-techno sci-fi movie, to be honest.

But the truth is, the world of production has always been set apart from the world of development, whether we’re talking about cubicle farms with dozens of coders on one end of the building and the target server room on the other side of the room, or if we’re describing a start-up with five people spread around the world, deploying to Amazon’s cloud-based solution.

Either way...