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Create standalone Java executable for different platforms without installation

I have created a Java application runtime image using jlink. I would like to be able to ship the software as an executable to different platforms. (Preferably by building on one platform, like cross-compiling.)
Ideally, it would be a single application file that users may double-click to launch, without installing anything.
How can this be accomplished?

What you're describing is what's called a native executable. There are programs that will wrap your Java application into an executable file but because Java runs it's code on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), your users will need to have it pre-installed for your program to work out of the box. You can code an installer for your application in something like C++ or C# (C# runs on the .NET Runtime which comes pre-installed on all Windows machines) that installs the JVM and possibly your application alongside it, and then compile that code to a native executable. That way, the end user doesn’t need to go looking around for Java downloads. This is the approach that Minecraft takes I believe.
Wrap your Java executable into a native executable using any of:
Launch4J (Windows)
Oracle Docs (MacOS)
Discourse (Linux)
Quarkus (native executable, no installer)
Warp Packer (self-extracting executable, no installer)

Also, have a look at SubstrateVM. This is not a true Java, however, it may help you in some cases like simple command line applications.
Substrate VM is a framework that allows ahead-of-time (AOT)
compilation of Java applications under closed-world assumption into
executable images or shared objects (ELF-64 or 64-bit Mach-O).

Yes, as of Java 8 there are two ways of doing this, using the javapackager tool, or the JavaFX Ant Tasks (which aren't actually specific to JavaFX, and are provided with the Java 8 JDK).
Here's an example of packaging an application as a Jar, setting the main-class and classpath attributes, and copying all the dependencies into a folder, using Maven.
<plugins>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>copy-dependencies</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/lib</outputDirectory>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.2.0</version>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
<mainClass>${project.groupId}.${project.artifactId}.DemoCLI</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
And here is the Ant build file to package the standalone application (exe for Windows, .app and .dmg on OS X, .deb and .rpm on Linux).
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE xml>
<!--
Uses the JavaFX Ant Tasks to build native application bundles
(specific to the platform which it is built on).
See https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deploy/javafx_ant_tasks.html
These tasks are distributed with version 8 of the Oracle JDK,
Amazon Corretto JDK, RedHat JDK, probably others, though they
do not seem to be the OpenJDK on Debian Linux
-->
<project
name="fxwebclient" default="default" basedir="."
xmlns:fx="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant">
<!-- In Java 8, java.home is typically the JRE of a JDK -->
<property name="jdk.lib.dir" value="${java.home}/../lib" />
<!-- Where to build our app bundles -->
<property name="build.dist.dir" value="${basedir}/target/dist" />
<echo>Using Java from ${java.home}</echo>
<target name="default" depends="clean">
<!-- get the ant-jfx.jar from the JDK -->
<taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml"
uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant"
classpath="${jdk.lib.dir}/ant-javafx.jar" />
<!-- Define our application entry point -->
<fx:application id="demo" name="demo"
mainClass="yourpackage.DemoCLI" />
<!-- Our jar and copied dependency jars (see pom.xml) -->
<fx:resources id="appRes">
<fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/target" includes="*.jar"/>
<fx:fileset dir="${basedir}/target/lib" includes="*.jar" />
</fx:resources>
<!-- Create app bundles [platform specific] -->
<fx:deploy nativeBundles="all"
outdir="${build.dist.dir}" outfile="DemoWebClient">
<fx:application refid="demo" />
<fx:resources refid="appRes" />
</fx:deploy>
</target>
<!-- clean up -->
<target name="clean">
<delete dir="${build.dist.dir}" includeEmptyDirs="true" />
<delete file="${basedir}/target/${ant.project.name}.jar" />
</target>
</project>

Double click to run executables on multiple platforms, requires prior registration of the file type with the operating system, or an existing file type to know how to handle the code.
jlink statically links the "required modules and their transitive dependencies" to the output.
There is no cross platform solution to this problem.
It is improbable(or to put it another way, not feasible) to include all platforms in a single file, since each executable type(COFF, ELF...), has a different structure. You could attempt to use a generic batch file to start the proper executable, but on Windows, that would require a text file type encoding; thus poisoning the remaining binary code.
Using jlink and the new jmod file format will allow you store native code in a Java container, and thus allowing the entry point into the embedded native JRE code in a single executable image for a single pre-defined platform.
The other side of this issue is the security implications. Since the embedded JRE is not subject to security updates, crackers may choose to embed a previously known flawed JRE, thus exposing corrected exploits to unknowing consumers.
The expected response from Anti-Virus programs would be to flag all non-updated embedded JRE's as viruses.

Jena schemagen in maven processing multiple ontologies

I am working on a project which uses multiple ontologies defined over several files. I am hoping to use Jena to generate the java classes to help with development but I can't seem to find a way to have Jena process multiple files as a maven goal.
I have never used Jena through maven before but I have used it on the command line (never for multiple ontologies at the same time).
The relevant part of my pom.xml is listed below (this was largely copied from the Jena website):
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>generate-sources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>java</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<mainClass>jena.schemagen</mainClass>
<commandlineArgs>
--inference \
-i ${basedir}/src/main/resources/ontologies/exception.owl \
--package com.borwell.dstl.mexs.ontology \
-o ${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/java \
</commandlineArgs>
<commandlineArgs>
--inference \
-i ${basedir}/src/main/resources/ontologies/location.owl \
--package com.borwell.dstl.mexs.ontology \
-o ${project.build.directory}/generated-sources/java \
</commandlineArgs>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
</plugins>
I have had a good look around on the Jena website and other sites (my googlefoo is usually quite good) but I have been unable to find anyone else having this problem or any documentation explaining how to do this.
Any help on this would be very useful.

I wrote a custom Maven task for Jena Schemagen, which is now part of the standard Jena distribution. See the documentation here

EDIT
This Answer now exists and calls out a more standard solution. Namely, the existence of a schemagen-maven plugin that the poster had developed which is included in the standard Jena distribution.
Original Answer
You have two options, create a custom maven plugin (which is actually not that difficult) or shell out to something outside maven to handle your needs. I made a hack in the past which I'll share with you. It's not pretty, but it works well.
This approach uses Maven Ant Tasks to call out to an ant build.xml from within the generate-sources phase of a maven build.
You begin by modifying your pom.xml to including the following:
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.7</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>generate-sources</phase>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<target>
<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antcontrib.properties"
classpathref="maven.runtime.classpath" />
<property name="runtime-classpath" refid="maven.runtime.classpath" />
<ant antfile="${basedir}/src/main/ant/build.xml"
inheritRefs="true">
<target name="my.generate-sources" />
</ant>
</target>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>ant-contrib</groupId>
<artifactId>ant-contrib</artifactId>
<version>1.0b3</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>ant</groupId>
<artifactId>ant</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
In the build.xml file (which, as you can see, is located in src/main/ant/build.xml, is the following.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE project>
<project name="my" default="my.error">
<property name="vocab.out.root" location="${basedir}/src/main/java" />
<property name="vocab.package" value = "put something here" />
<property name="vocab.ns" value="put something here" />
<path id="my.vocabulary">
<fileset dir="${basedir}/src/main/resources/put something here" casesensitive="yes" >
<include name="**/*.owl" />
</fileset>
</path>
<scriptdef language="javascript" name="make-proper">
<attribute name="string" />
<attribute name="to" />
<![CDATA[
var raw_string = attributes.get( "string" );
var string_elements = raw_string.split('-');
var nameComponents;
var finalName = "";
var i;
for(i = 0; i < string_elements.length; i++){
var element = string_elements[i];
finalName += element.substr(0,1).toUpperCase() + element.substr(1);
}
project.setProperty( attributes.get( "to" ), finalName );
]]>
</scriptdef>
<!-- target for processing a file -->
<target name="my.schemagen-file">
<echo message="${vocab.file}" />
<!-- for constructing vocab file name -->
<local name="source.file.dir" />
<dirname property="source.file.dir" file="${vocab.file}" />
<local name="source.file" />
<basename property="source.file" file="${vocab.file}" suffix=".owl" />
<local name="vocab.name" />
<make-proper string="${source.file}" to="vocab.name" />
<!-- for constructing destination file name -->
<local name="vocab.package.path" />
<propertyregex property="vocab.package.path" input="${vocab.package}" regexp="\." replace="/" global="true" />
<local name="dest.file" />
<property name="dest.file" value="${vocab.out.root}/${vocab.package.path}/${vocab.name}.java" />
<!-- Determine if we should build, then build -->
<outofdate>
<sourcefiles path="${vocab.file}" />
<targetfiles path="${dest.file}" />
<sequential>
<!-- Actual construction of the destination file -->
<echo message="--inference --ontology -i ${vocab.file} -a ${vocab.ns} --package ${vocab.package} -o ${vocab.out.root} -n ${vocab.name}" />
<java classname="jena.schemagen" classpath="${runtime-classpath}">
<arg line="--ontology --nostrict -i ${vocab.file} -a ${vocab.ns} --package ${vocab.package} -o ${vocab.out.root} -n ${vocab.name}" />
</java>
</sequential>
</outofdate>
</target>
<!-- Maven antrun target to generate sources -->
<target name="my.generate-sources">
<foreach target="my.schemagen-file" param="vocab.file" inheritall="true">
<path refid="my.vocabulary"/>
</foreach>
</target>
<target name="my.error">
<fail message="This is not intended to be executed from the command line. Execute generate-sources goal using maven; ex:\nmvn generate-sources" />
</target>
</project>
Walking you through the whole thing.
The maven-antrun-plugin executes our build script , making sure that antcontrib are available as well as the maven.runtime.classpath. This ensures that properties that would be available within maven are available within the ant task as well.
If build.xml is called without specifying a task, it intentionally fails. This helps to keep you from using it wrong.
If the my.generate-sources target is executed, then we can use foreach from antcontrib in order to process each file within your specified directory. Adjust this file pattern however you need to. Note that an assumed extension of .owl is used elsewhere.
For each owl file, the my.schemagen-file target is called. I utilize local variables in order make this function.
A custom ant task (defined in javascript, named make-proper) helps to generate the destination file names for your files. I use a convention where my vocabulary files are in some-hyphenated-lowercase-structure.owl. My desired class name for that would be SomeHyphenatedLowercaseStructure.java. You should customize this however you see fit.
For each derived file name, we test to see if it exists and if it is out of date. This convenience only allows schemagen to run if the source file is newer than the destination file. We use the outofdate task to do this.
We run schemagen. I use flags specific to OWL vocabularies. You can adjust this however best suits your system.

After more generalised searching and thanks to DB5 I have found the solution to be multiple executions. I was hoping for a more elegant solution but this does work.
Credit to DB5

Is there any way to trigger the Maven Appengine Devserver to auto-refresh static files?

The most recent version of the maven plugin has enabled updating of code every 5s, which is a great improvement. But unless I am configuring this wrong, it doesn't seem to pick up static file changes such as work in progress Javascript connecting to the appengine code.
Is there any way to alter this behavior or do I just need to wait for a new release?

Automatic updates cannot be done using appending devserver alone right now. Strictly speaking, we need to wait.
But you can achieve the effect of seamless html/js/css/etc update, hot java code replacement, etc. with the configuration below.
Configure Apache httpd or Nginx to serve static code directly from your war-source and route to app engine for servlets. In my case, all the html are directly accessible from webapp directory and servlets are called via /sim/. Using nginx and 7070 port, my working nginx config looks like:
server {
listen 7070;
root /home/pchauhan/Projects/my-company/my-mvn-gae-project/my-mvn-gae-project-war/src/main/webapp;
location /sim/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/sim/;
}
}
Use this documentation of nginx, for more configurations.
Configure Eclipse and GAE separately.
Now, you can directly make changes to source and get them on refresh, both for html (via nginx) and servlets (via devserver).
Add this webapp folder to your Chrome Dev Tools, Sources Workspace and life will be easier. Small changes can directly be saved from chrome to src via ctrl
Please note, that while this is great, you should test your app once solely on 8080 (devserver port) before uploading, just in case there is a bug in maven config and target is not being created/served correctly.
Alternate Idea for syncing: If you do not want to use nginx/httpd for some reason, you can add target...webapp to chrome workspace, work directly there for seamless updt and then use lsyncd to sync target back to src. I haven't tried it yet, but looks feasible, albeit a bit risky.

So far, best way i found was configuring below entries in pom.xml. This will build automatically your static files and reflects on the page.
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.7</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>process-classes</phase>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<target>
<property name="target.webapp.dir"
value="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}" />
<property name="src.webapp.dir" value="${basedir}/src/main/webapp" />
<sync verbose="true" todir="${target.webapp.dir}"
includeEmptyDirs="true">
<fileset dir="${src.webapp.dir}" />
<preserveintarget>
<include name="WEB-INF/lib/**" />
<include name="WEB-INF/classes/**" />
<include name="WEB-INF/appengine-generated/**" />
</preserveintarget>
</sync>
<!-- <sync verbose="true" todir="${target.webapp.dir}/WEB-INF/classes">
<fileset dir="${basedir}/target/classes" /> </sync> -->
</target>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
And another entry after
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<!-- This plugin's configuration is used to store Eclipse m2e settings
only. It has no influence on the Maven build itself. -->
<plugin>
<groupId>org.eclipse.m2e</groupId>
<artifactId>lifecycle-mapping</artifactId>
<version>1.0.0</version>
<configuration>
<lifecycleMappingMetadata>
<pluginExecutions>
<pluginExecution>
<pluginExecutionFilter>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<versionRange>[1.6,)</versionRange>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
</pluginExecutionFilter>
<action>
<execute>
<runOnIncremental>true</runOnIncremental>
</execute>
</action>
</pluginExecution>
</pluginExecutions>
</lifecycleMappingMetadata>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</pluginManagement>
This is working fine. As soon as any static files changed and saved, it got reflected on the page.

Like PoojaC20, I have also not been able to get this working with devserver alone but I ended up with a different workaround which I thought I'd share in case others found it helpful.
I now host my development static files outside of the GAE devserver by using grunt-serve. This allows a large number of advantages including:
Automatic page refresh when static files have changed - don't even need to press the refresh button.
Automatic conversion of advanced CSS such as LESS
Automatic conversion of javascript-compileable languages such as CoffeeScript
Mechanism for minification and CDN-ification when development is done.
The most profound implication of the above is that I have needed to move away from session based authentication to OAuth or OpenID Connect based authentication systems and to make all of my web service calls CORS compatible. This is some work, but it too has one very profound advantage:
Once your web sever has moved to OpenID Connect based authentication, it can now connect identically to native (e.g. mobile) client or web based clients!

Maven: Usage of external libraries for integration test

Currently, I set up an integration test suite. The base is a Maven project with several modules which are dependent to each other to setup a database, to put some data into it and to run tests on it, before wrapping everything up. Additionally, I have modules with some utilities and test data in there.
The first step (not mentioned above) is the copy of a zipped image which includes a lot of JAR files which make up the software suite to be tested. Unfortunately, the software is not build by Maven, but by Ant, so I can not find the stuff in an Artifactory or something similar.
My problem is now, that I copy and unzip the image with an integration test method, but I do not know, how I can add the JAR files to the Maven classpath. All other modules need to compile and run against the jars extracted from the ZIP file.
How can I add the JARs to the Maven class path for later compiling and test runs? The destination of the ZIP content is always the same directory. Unfortunately, the names of the JARs contain version information (build numbers) which change. So an easy usage of system and the tag is not working so easily. A path entry like ${package.path}/lib/*/.jar would be great. Is there a plugin, maybe?
Or does anyone have a better idea to setup an integration test against prebuild JARs?

Create a single jar from all of your dependencies, everything in ${package.path}/lib/*/.jar.
You could use an ant task to create this jar, either before you run maven, or as part of your maven build.
To merge your jars, you can use the Ant Jar Task (see section Merging Archives). From there:
<jar destfile="build/main/checksites.jar">
<fileset dir="build/main/classes"/>
<restrict>
<name name="**/*.class"/>
<archives>
<zips>
<fileset dir="lib/main" includes="**/*.jar"/>
</zips>
</archives>
</restrict>
</jar>
This creates a jar file which embeds all the classes from all the jars in lib/main.
You can then use the system scope which points at this jar as normal in maven. Note: if you create the jar in maven (via ant), then you should create the jar in target, so that it gets cleaned correctly.
To use an ant build file from maven, you can use the maven antrun plugin, similarly to:
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<tasks>
<property name="local.project.artifact.name" value="${project.build.finalName}" />
<property name="local.distribution.artifact.name" value="${local.project.artifact.name}-distribution" />
<property name="local.distribution.artifact.file" value="${project.build.directory}/${local.distribution.artifact.name}.zip" />
<ant antfile="build-deploy.xml" />
</tasks>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
This runs the ant build file build-deploy.xml in the package phase. The modifications necessary for your system are left as an exercise for the reader :-).

Executable war file that starts jetty without maven

I'm trying to make an "executable" war file (java -jar myWarFile.war) that will start up a Jetty webserver that hosts the webapp contained in the WAR file I executed.
I found a page that described how to make what I'm looking for:
However, following that advice along with how I think I'm supposed to make an executable jar (war) isn't working.
I have an Ant task creating a WAR file with a manifest that looks like:
Manifest-Version: 1.0
Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.7.1
Created-By: 1.5.0_18-b02 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)
Main-Class: Start
The contents of the WAR file look like:
> Start.class
> jsp
> build.jsp
> META-INF
> MANIFEST.MF
> WEB-INF
> lib
> jetty-6.1.22.jar
> jetty-util.6.1.22.jar
When I try to execute the WAR file, the error is:
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/mortbay/jetty/Handler
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.mortbay.jetty.Handler
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)
Could not find the main class: Start. Program will exit.
There appears to be two errors here: one where it seems the JAR files can't be found, and one where the Start class can't be found.
To fix the first one, I put the Jetty JAR files in the base of the WAR file and tried again -- same error. I also tried adding the WEB-INF/lib/<specific-JAR-files> to the Class-Path attribute of the manifest. That did not work either.
Does anyone have any insight as to what I'm doing right/wrong and how I can get this executable WAR file up and running?

The link you have in your question provides most of what you need. However, there are a few things that need to be done in addition to that.
Any class files that Jetty needs to start up will need to be located at the root of the war file when it's packaged. We can leverage Ant to do that for us before we <war> the file. The war's manifest file will also need a Main-Class attribute to execute the server.
Here's a step-by-step:
Create your Jetty server class:
This is adapted from the link you provided.
package com.mycompany.myapp;
import java.io.File;
import java.net.URL;
import java.security.ProtectionDomain;
import org.mortbay.jetty.Server;
import org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext;
public final class EmbeddedJettyServer
{
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
int port = Integer.parseInt(System.getProperty("port", "8080"));
Server server = new Server(port);
ProtectionDomain domain = EmbeddedJettyServer.class.getProtectionDomain();
URL location = domain.getCodeSource().getLocation();
WebAppContext webapp = new WebAppContext();
webapp.setContextPath("/");
webapp.setDescriptor(location.toExternalForm() + "/WEB-INF/web.xml");
webapp.setServer(server);
webapp.setWar(location.toExternalForm());
// (Optional) Set the directory the war will extract to.
// If not set, java.io.tmpdir will be used, which can cause problems
// if the temp directory gets cleaned periodically.
// Your build scripts should remove this directory between deployments
webapp.setTempDirectory(new File("/path/to/webapp-directory"));
server.setHandler(webapp);
server.start();
server.join();
}
}
To see what all you can configure here, have a look at the Jetty API documentation.
Build the war with Ant:
This uses a staging directory to unpack the necessary class files into the root of the war so they're accessible when the war is executed.
<target name="war" description="--> Creates self-executing war">
<property name="staging.dir" location="${basedir}/staging"/>
<property name="webapp.dir" location="${basedir}/src/webapp"/>
<mkdir dir="${staging.dir}"/>
<!-- assumes you have all of your war content (excluding classes and libraries) already structured in a directory called src/webapp -->
<!-- e.g. -->
<!-- src/webapp/index.html -->
<!-- src/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml -->
<!-- src/webapp/WEB-INF/classes/my.properties -->
<!-- etc ... -->
<copy todir="${staging.dir}">
<fileset dir="${webapp.dir}" includes="**/*"/>
</copy>
<unjar dest="${staging.dir}">
<!-- you'll have to locate these jars or appropriate versions; note that these include JSP support -->
<!-- you might find some of them in the downloaded Jetty .tgz -->
<fileset dir="path/to/jetty/jars">
<include name="ant-1.6.5.jar"/>
<include name="core-3.1.1.jar"/>
<include name="jetty-6.1.24.jar"/>
<include name="jsp-2.1-glassfish-2.1.v20091210.jar"/><!-- your JSP implementation may vary -->
<include name="jsp-api-2.1-glassfish-2.1.v20091210.jar"/><!-- your JSP implementation may vary -->
<include name="servlet-api-2.5-20081211.jar"/><!-- your Servlet API implementation may vary -->
</fileset>
<patternset><!-- to exclude some of the stuff we don't really need -->
<exclude name="META-INF/**/*"/>
<exclude name="images/**/*"/>
<exclude name=".options"/>
<exclude name="about.html"/>
<exclude name="jdtCompilerAdapter.jar"/>
<exclude name="plugin*"/>
</patternset>
</unjar>
<!-- copy in the class file built from the above EmbeddedJettyServer.java -->
<copy todir="${staging.dir}">
<fileset dir="path/to/classes/dir" includes="com/mycompany/myapp/EmbeddedJettyServer.class"/>
</copy>
<war destfile="myapp.war" webxml="${webapp.dir}/WEB-INF/web.xml">
<fileset dir="${staging.dir}" includes="**/*"/>
<classes dir="path/to/classes/dir"/><!-- your application classes -->
<lib dir="path/to/lib/dir"/><!-- application dependency jars -->
<manifest>
<!-- add the Main-Class attribute that will execute our server class -->
<attribute name="Main-Class" value="com.mycompany.myapp.EmbeddedJettyServer"/>
</manifest>
</war>
<delete dir="${staging.dir}"/>
</target>
Execute the war:
If everything's set up properly above, you should be able to:
java -jar myapp.war
// or if you want to configure the port (since we are using the System property in the code)
java -Dport=8443 -jar myapp.war

This is an adaptation for Maven of #RobHruska's answer. It just copies the files of the main class and merges the Jetty JAR files into the WAR file, nothing new, just to simplify your life if you are new -like me- to Maven:
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>move-main-class</id>
<phase>compile</phase>
<configuration>
<tasks>
<copy todir="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}">
<fileset dir="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}/WEB-INF/classes/">
<include name="main/*.class" />
</fileset>
</copy>
<unjar dest="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}">
<!-- you'll have to locate these jars or appropriate versions; note that these include JSP support -->
<!-- you might find some of them in the downloaded Jetty .tgz -->
<fileset dir="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}/WEB-INF/lib/">
<include name="ant-1.6.5.jar"/>
<!--<include name="core-3.1.1.jar"/>-->
<include name="jetty*"/>
<include name="servlet-api*"/>
</fileset>
<patternset><!-- to exclude some of the stuff we don't really need -->
<exclude name="META-INF/**/*"/>
<exclude name="images/**/*"/>
<exclude name=".options"/>
<exclude name="about.html"/>
<exclude name="jdtCompilerAdapter.jar"/>
<exclude name="plugin*"/>
</patternset>
</unjar>
</tasks>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.2</version>
<configuration>
<archiveClasses>true</archiveClasses>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>main.Main</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>

We have figured this out by using jetty-console-maven-plugin.
Whenever you run mvn package it creates another war that can be used with java -jar whateverpackage-runnable.war
<plugin>
<groupId>org.simplericity.jettyconsole</groupId>
<artifactId>jetty-console-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.45</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<goals>
<goal>createconsole</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<additionalDependencies>
<additionalDependency>
<artifactId>jetty-console-requestlog-plugin</artifactId>
</additionalDependency>
<additionalDependency>
<artifactId>jetty-console-gzip-plugin</artifactId>
</additionalDependency>
<additionalDependency>
<artifactId>jetty-console-ajp-plugin</artifactId>
</additionalDependency>
<additionalDependency>
<artifactId>jetty-console-startstop-plugin</artifactId>
</additionalDependency>
</additionalDependencies>
</configuration>
</plugin>
It also generates the init.d scripts and everything for you!

Hudson solves this exact problem using the Winstone servlet container, which supports this use case directly. http://winstone.sourceforge.net/#embedding
Perhaps this would work for you?

Even though this is kind of old another alternative with Jetty 8 is to simply include the Jetty jars as dependencies in your pom and add the following in your pom (versus an ant script that unpackages the war and repackages it):
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.4</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<phase>package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>shade</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<createDependencyReducedPom>true</createDependencyReducedPom>
<transformers>
<transformer
implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer">
<mainClass>JettyStandaloneMain</mainClass>
</transformer>
</transformers>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>
<!-- The main class needs to be in the root of the war in order to be
runnable -->
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>move-main-class</id>
<phase>compile</phase>
<configuration>
<tasks>
<move todir="${project.build.directory}/${project.build.finalName}">
<fileset dir="${project.build.directory}/classes/">
<include name="JettyStandaloneMain.class" />
</fileset>
</move>
</tasks>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

I take it that by "without maven" you want a jar that you can run by itself and not with "mvn jetty:run"--not that you don't want to use maven at all.
It took me way to long to figure this out because I found many options--none of them dirt simple. Eventually I found this maven plugin from simplericity. It works wonderfully.

This is my example ANT extract. The idea is to unpackage the Jetty dependencies and then include them locally just like a normal JAR file:
<!-- Hack: Java doesn't support jars within jars/wars -->
<unjar src="${lib.dir}/container/jetty.jar" dest="${build.dir}/unjar"/>
<unjar src="${lib.dir}/container/jetty-util.jar" dest="${build.dir}/unjar"/>
<unjar src="${lib.dir}/container/servlet-api.jar" dest="${build.dir}/unjar"/>
<unjar src="${lib.dir}/container/jsp-api.jar" dest="${build.dir}/unjar"/>
<!-- Build war file as normal, just including the compiled and unjar'ed files -->
<war destfile="${war.file}" webxml="${config.dir}/web.xml">
<fileset dir="${build.dir}/classes"/>
<fileset dir="${build.dir}/unjar"/>
<fileset dir="${resources.dir}" excludes="*.swp"/>
<lib dir="${lib.dir}/runtime"/>
<manifest>
<attribute name="Main-Class" value="Start"/>
</manifest>
</war>
Note:
The WEB-INF/lib direcory is for the web applications dependencies. In this case we're packaging the WAR file so that it works like the normal Jetty JAR file on startup

Putting .jars inside a .war file root does nothing
Putting .jars inside WEB-INF/lib doesn't help the JVM find the Jetty files to even begin launching your .war. It's "too late" to put them there.
Putting .jars in the manifest Class-Path only works for external .jar files, not those contained in the .jar
So what to do?
Use a build script to simply merge all the .jar files you need into the .war file. This takes a little extra work. It's also a bit ugly in that the compiled code is part of the servable files in the .war
Add dependent .jars to the JVM's classpath with "java -cp jetty.jar:... ..." Works though this kind of defeats the purpose of one stand-alone .war

I have done a similar thing before but are you launchign the app as "java -jar xxx.war" ?. You have only 2 jars and it is not going to be enough I think. Also try using Jetty 7.0.0M1 (which is the latest version). When I added jetty-server and jetty-webapp as two dependencies (they are from org.eclipse.jetty) I get the following jar's in the lib directory. FYI the org.mortbay.jetty.Handler was in the jetty-server*.jar.
jetty-continuation-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-http-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-io-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-security-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-server-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-servlet-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-util-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-webapp-7.0.0.M1.jar
jetty-xml-7.0.0.M1.jar