https://stackoverflow.com/questions/971158/maven-2-assembly-plugin-clobbers-some-meta-inf-files
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8609322/need-understanding-of-spring-handlers-and-spring-schemas
I tried the shade plugin approach and it worked very nicely. Here is all you need to put in your POM (no assembly plugin needed).
<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> <transformers> <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ManifestResourceTransformer"> <mainClass>org.example.Runner</mainClass> </transformer> <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.AppendingTransformer"> <resource>META-INF/spring.handlers</resource> </transformer> </transformers> </configuration> </execution> </executions> </plugin>