Apache Maven Access Maven informations in code Getting the version number from within a jar

Example

If you package your application in a jar using the maven-jar-plugin or the maven-assembly-plugin, an easy way to get the current pom version is to add an entry in the manifest, which is then available from Java.

The secret is to set the addDefaultImplementationEntries flag to true (and the addDefaultSpecificationEntries is you also need the artifact id).

jar plugin configuration:

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
      <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
      <configuration>
        <archive>
          <manifest>
            <mainClass>...</mainClass>
            <addDefaultImplementationEntries>
              true
            </addDefaultImplementationEntries>
          </manifest>
        </archive>
      </configuration>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

assembly plugin configuration:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <descriptorRefs>
            <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
        </descriptorRefs>
        <archive>
            <manifest>  
              <addDefaultImplementationEntries>true</addDefaultImplementationEntries> 
            </manifest>
        </archive>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution .../>
    </executions>
</plugin>

addDefaultImplementationEntries instructs Maven to add the following headers to the MANIFEST.MF of your jar:

Implementation-Title: display-version
Implementation-Version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
Implementation-Vendor-Id: test

Now you can use this line of code anywhere in your jar to access the version number:

getClass().getPackage().getImplementationVersion()

More information here and here.