The docker registry hub has a Maven image that can be used to create java containers.

Using this approach the build machine does not need to have either Java or Maven pre-installed, Docker controls the entire build process.

Example

├── Dockerfile
├── pom.xml
└── src
    ├── main
    │   ├── java
    │   │   └── org
    │   │       └── demo
    │   │           └── App.java
    │   └── resources
    │       └── log4j.properties
    └── test
        └── java
            └── org
                └── demo
                    └── AppTest.java

Image is built as follows:

docker build -t my-maven .

And run as follows:

$ docker run -it --rm my-maven
0    [main] INFO  org.demo.App  - hello world

Dockerfile

FROM maven:3.3-jdk-8-onbuild
CMD ["java","-jar","/usr/src/app/target/demo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar"]

---

Update

If you wanted to optimize your image to exclude the source you could create a Dockerfile that only includes the built jar:

FROM java:8
ADD target/demo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar /opt/demo/demo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar
CMD ["java","-jar","/opt/demo/demo-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar"]

And build the image in two steps:

docker run -it --rm -w /opt/maven \
   -v $PWD:/opt/maven \
   -v $HOME/.m2:/root/.m2 \
   maven:3.3-jdk-8 \
   mvn clean install

docker build -t my-app .

__

Update (2017-07-27)

Docker now has a multi-stage build capability. This enables Docker to build an image containing the build tools but only the runtime dependencies.

The following example demonstrates this concept, note how the jar is copied from target directory of the first build phase

FROM maven:3.3-jdk-8-onbuild 

FROM java:8
COPY --from=0 /usr/src/app/target/demo-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar /opt/demo.jar
CMD ["java","-jar","/opt/demo.jar"]