The sar goal can be used by setting the project packaging type to jboss-sar and adding the plugin to the pom with extensions enabled.
<project>
...
<packaging>jboss-sar</packaging>
...
<build>
...
<plugins>
...
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-packaging-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
<!-- Enable packaging types and lifecycle bindings. -->
<extensions>true</extensions>
...
</plugin>
...
</plugins>
...
</build>
...
</project>
A sar project will normally include some dependencies that should be added the the sar "lib" directory, and some that should not be included.
By default only dependencies with a compile or runtime scope will be included in the generated sar file. The excludes parameter can also be used to prevent certain dependency artifacts from being included in the sar.
<project>
...
<packaging>jboss-sar</packaging>
...
<build>
...
<plugins>
...
<plugin>
<groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-packaging-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
<extensions>true</extensions>
<configuration>
<excludes>
<exclude>groupId:artifactId</exclude> <!-- if you want to exclude an artifact in the sar -->
</excludes>
</configuration>
</plugin>
...
</plugins>
...
</build>
...
</project>