Minimizing

Shadow can automatically remove all classes of dependencies that are not used by the project, thereby minimizing the resulting shadowed JAR.

// Minimizing a shadow JAR
tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
  minimize()
}

A dependency can be excluded from the minimization process, thereby forcing it's inclusion the shadow JAR. This is useful when the dependency analyzer cannot find the usage of a class programmatically, for example if the class is loaded dynamically via Class.forName(String). Each of the group, name and version fields separated by : of a dependency is interpreted as a regular expression.

// Force a class to be retained during minimization
tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
  minimize {
    exclude(dependency('org.scala-lang:.*:.*'))
  }
}

Dependencies scoped as api will automatically excluded from minimization and used as "entry points" on minimization.

Similar to dependencies, projects can also be excluded.

tasks.named('shadowJar', com.github.jengelman.gradle.plugins.shadow.tasks.ShadowJar) {
    minimize {
        exclude(project(":api"))
    }
}

When excluding a project, all dependencies of the excluded project are automatically excluded as well.