IntelliJ: generate a JAR but do *NOT* including dependencies

Question

In a simple IntelliJ module, I just want to generate a .jar file with my .class files, via IntelliJ IDE commands.

Please be careful before marking this as a "duplicate":

Although I've seen Google and Stack hits with promising titles, I'm not finding a really good answer, or the title is misleading, or its an unanswered question. I cover one possible answer that I've seen before (below), and why I don't think it's a match.

I've used Eclipse in the past, but I'm rather new to IntelliJ.

I've worked with the "Project Structure / Artifacts" stuff. I can generate the giant jar, similar to using "shade", but it's huge because it includes all the nested dependencies. We want the small jar with just this module's class files because the system we're deploying to already has all the other jars in place.

I've seen some references to changing a target directory in the Artifacts dialog box, but it then talks about references being made in the Manifest file, which I don't want. The destination environment already has its java paths setup, so I'm worried that having jar references in this jar will mess that up. If this really is the answer then I'm confused about how it works.

Constraint 1: Can't use command line tools, since I'm actually walking somebody else through these steps, who likely doesn't have command line tools installed in the path, or wouldn't know how to use them, etc. They're not a coder. (Yes, I know this sounds like an odd scenario; I inherited this situation.)

Constraint 2: We want to keep this as a simple IntelliJ project, vs. converting to Maven or Ant or Gradle, etc.

Answer 1

Coworker had the fix.

Short Answer:

Remove all of the other jars/libraries from Output Layout tab of the Artifacts config dialog.

Longer Answer:

You still do File / Project Structure...

Then in the Project Settings, click Artifacts.

And then you still click the plus button (second column) ti create a new artifact setting.

The trick is the "Output Layout" tab in the third column of the window. Highlight all entries EXCEPT the compiled output of your project and delete all those other entries (click the minus button under that tab, directly above your_project.jar)

On my laptop this causes it to pause for a few seconds; I thought it didn't do anything, then finally it reflected that everything was gone except "'my_module' compile output"

Also check the "Build on make" (for when you later do Build / Rebuild Project)

If you need both a full jar and a slim jar, you can have more than one Artifact configuration with different names, and they will default to different output directories.