Eclipse / Maven: "Could not find the main class" Errors While Building Executable JAR

Question

Updated: "Could not find the main class" turned out to be a red herring: In the line immediately before public static void main(String[] args) my class attempts to load a resource bundle from a file that was not included in the JAR. Failure to load this resource produced reporting that lead me in the wrong direction:

Caused by: java.util.MissingResourceException: Can't find bundle for base name propFile, locale en_US
        at java.util.ResourceBundle.throwMissingResourceException(ResourceBundle.java:1427)
        at java.util.ResourceBundle.getBundleImpl(ResourceBundle.java:1250)
        at java.util.ResourceBundle.getBundle(ResourceBundle.java:705)
        at com.foo.bar.MyApp(MyApp.java:103)
Could not find the main class: com.foo.bar.MyApp.  Program will exit.

I'm developing on Win 7 64-bit with Eclipse Juno and JDK 1.6_45, both 32-bit. I'm generating an executable JAR with a mvn clean install invocation.

When I attempt to launch the app I've received "Could not find the main class" or "Failed to load Main-Class manifest attribute" Similar ground has been covered here and here. I've read through these answers and the basic maven examples, but I'm still failing to end up with an executable JAR.

I've attempted to execute the app with both java -jar MyApp-jar-with-dependencies and java -cp MyApp-jar-with-dependencies com.foo.bar.MyApp invocations

I find it particularly confusing that the MANIFEST.MF (contined within META-INF within the JAR) specifically lists my target main class, and the MyApp.class file is present in the directory tree at the correct location (com\foo\bar\MyApp.class).

I have refactored my package name and class name a few times over the course of development. Might this action have caused some referencing/classpath hiccup? Where else could the main class lookup failing?

My pom.xml:

<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/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
   <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

   <parent>
      [...]
   </parent>

   <groupId>com.foo.bar</groupId>
   <artifactId>MyApp</artifactId>
   <packaging>jar</packaging>
   <version>2.0.0.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
   <name>MY APP</name>

   <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

   <properties>
      <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
      <issues-product>APP</issues-product>
      <issues-component>MY_APP</issues-component>
   </properties>

   <dependencies>
    [...]
   </dependencies>

   <build>
      <finalName>${project.artifactId}</finalName>
      <plugins>
        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>2.3.2</version>
          <configuration>
            <source>1.6</source>
            <target>1.6</target>
          </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
          <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
          <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
          <version>${maven.checkstyle.version}</version>
          <configuration>
            [...]
          </configuration>
         </plugin>
         <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-pmd-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${maven.pmd.version}</version>
            <configuration>
                [...]
            </configuration>
         </plugin>
         <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-javadoc-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>${maven.javadoc.version}</version>
         </plugin>
        <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.2</version>
        <configuration>
          <descriptorRefs>
            <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
          </descriptorRefs>
          <archive>
            <manifest>
                <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
              <mainClass>com.foo.bar.MyApp</mainClass>
            </manifest>
          </archive>
        </configuration>
        <executions>
          <execution>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
              <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
          </execution>
        </executions>
      </plugin>
      </plugins>
      <pluginManagement>
         [...]
      </pluginManagement>
   </build>

   <reporting>
      [...]
   </reporting>

   <scm>
      [...]
   </scm>
</project>

My MANIFEST.MF within the the output JAR:

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Archiver-Version: Plexus Archiver
Created-By: Apache Maven
Built-By: myname
Build-Jdk: 1.6.0_45
Main-Class: com.foo.bar.MyApp

Answer 1

I'm not sure why yours isn't working, here is a cut-n-paste from my working maven project. You should only have to replace com.pictureu.mains.MainGui with your main class to test

        <plugin>
          <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
          <configuration>
            <archive>
              <manifest>
                <mainClass>com.pictureu.mains.MainGui</mainClass>
              </manifest>
            </archive>
            <descriptorRefs>
              <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
            </descriptorRefs>
          </configuration>
        </plugin>