Since Version 2.6.0 of Spring Boot, the launch script is not attached to the front of the executable JAR file produced by the spring-boot-maven-plugin.

I download the basic Java11, Maven Spring Boot 2.6.2 project from Spring Initializr. Added jar and

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <executable>true</executable>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

then executed "maven clean install" (I have Maven 3.6.1)

The resulting JAR does not contain the launch script. I played with the version of the plugin and found out that version 2.5.8 works, i.e. the launch script is attached to the JAR. Version 2.6.0 does not work properly

Comment From: wilkinsona

Thanks for the report but I cannot reproduce the behaviour that you have described using Maven 3.8.3 (as generated by start.spring.io) and Java 11.0.10 on macOS.

I used the following pom.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.6.2</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>
    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>executable</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>executable</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
    <properties>
        <java.version>11</java.version>
    </properties>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <configuration>
                    <executable>true</executable>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

This resulted in a jar with the launch script prepended:

$ more target/executable-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar
#!/bin/bash
#
#    .   ____          _            __ _ _
#   /\\ / ___'_ __ _ _(_)_ __  __ _ \ \ \ \
#  ( ( )\___ | '_ | '_| | '_ \/ _` | \ \ \ \
#   \\/  ___)| |_)| | | | | || (_| |  ) ) ) )
#    '  |____| .__|_| |_|_| |_\__, | / / / /
#   =========|_|==============|___/=/_/_/_/
#   :: Spring Boot Startup Script ::
#

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          executable
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $syslog $network
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs $syslog $network
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: executable
# Description:       Demo project for Spring Boot
# chkconfig:         2345 99 01
### END INIT INFO

[[ -n "$DEBUG" ]] && set -x

# Initialize variables that cannot be provided by a .conf file
WORKING_DIR="$(pwd)"
# shellcheck disable=SC2153
[[ -n "$JARFILE" ]] && jarfile="$JARFILE"
[[ -n "$APP_NAME" ]] && identity="$APP_NAME"

# Follow symlinks to find the real jar and detect init.d script
cd "$(dirname "$0")" || exit 1
[[ -z "$jarfile" ]] && jarfile=$(pwd)/$(basename "$0")
while [[ -L "$jarfile" ]]; do
  if [[ "$jarfile" =~ init\.d ]]; then
    init_script=$(basename "$jarfile")
  else
…

If you would like us to spend some more time investigating, please provide a complete sample project that reproduces the problem and some more information about your OS, Java version, etc.

Comment From: octmueller

You are right. It is actually there. I'm having another issue with the JAR, which is already discussed here Sorry and thanks for looking into this