CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mavenjenkinsdependency-managementpom.xmlmaven-release-plugin
spots
spots

Reputation: 75

Automating Maven artifact releasing

For a project with a large number of Maven artifacts (both internally generated as well as external ones), how does one go about automating the releasing of the internally controlled artifacts as part of an overall product release.

Things to be aware of about this question, we use Jenkins and the Maven release plugin. So the operation of releasing a single artifact is automated (albeit the operation to kick-start the process is manual). However the process of releasing all the changed artefacts over the course of a release is not automated (i.e. one has to manually kick-start the release of each artifact). Part of the problem is that almost nothing is released until the end of the release, prior to that everything remains in SHAPSHOT. We have a huge number of components as well as numerous applications/services (over 30) which rely on the plethora of components. So it is not just the case of picking a component and releasing, there are release dependency hierarchies that must be followed (i.e. start at the bottom releasing components that do not use other components and then work your way up until all the applications/services are released).

It is also worth noting that we use two common parent poms which, for the most part, control the versions of the external artifact dependencies and the internal component dependencies. Some pom files for components and applications may override this, but this is (or should be) an exception and should be for a good, but temporary, reason. So when an internal artifact is released, the version in the corresponding parent dependency pom should also be updated.

The product has a release number (of course), however the various pom files technically do not share this version number. While this is not strictly true, the idea as that when parts of the software are set to end-of-life, they will not be updated in the future, thus while a limited number of artifact versions match the product's version at present, this will eventually not be the case.

Any thoughts on ways to get this process automated would be greatly appreciated. Also if you feel what I have described seems to be a crazy way to manage the software, then please provide a comment. Thank you.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1400

Answers (1)

Toby Jackson
Toby Jackson

Reputation: 947

You might be able to make use of the Maven Versions plugin which can help formalise versions for projects.

For example, the use-next-releases goal may allow you to release the lowest level of project and then more rapidly bring those released versions into their dependencies.

There may also be scope to use the use-next-versions goal if you fancy releasing components as necessary and simply bring your projects to the "latest" version thats been formally released.

Upvotes: 2

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