Snapshots publication / Release frequency

[PaulWoitaschek]

It would be great if there were snapshot builds (either on a daily basis or on every commit)

Currently I'm waiting for this to be released: #1027 and it would be great if we could already make use of this until there is a stable release.

This could also be great because possible issues could be identified easier before released.

[jmini]

Thank you for this message.

Some context:

I joined earlier this year (2023) as a commiter in this project to help @jabby with the maintenance.
I have most of the permissions in this repo and in the GitHub group.
I did not got any permissions to perform releases.

Like you I am not totally happy with the health of this library:

• I have pending pull requests open since months. No review from anybody.
• The release peace is too slow. For me we should release more often (like every months or at least every quarter)

Over the last months I have tried to contact @jabby multiple times now (Twitter/x, email), but currently I did not got any answer.

About releases / SNAPSHOT publication:

As mentioned I do not have any rights on sonatype (the service to publish on maven central).

I was thinking contacting them directly (not sure if there is a process when the original committers are no longer responding)

An option could be to change the groupId to be io.github.gitlab4j. But I would reserve this solution for the extreme case where there is no other options.

Jitpack:

The service https://jitpack.io could offer a similar experience than SNAPSHOT releases on a maven repo. They can build any commit of any repo on demand.

Sadly we are stuck because of the usage of io.fabric8:docker-maven-plugin

The plan is to switch to testcontainers. I made some progress on the open PR (#935) but this work should be finished to eliminate the need of the fabric8 plugin.

Open discussion:

Thank you very much for engaging on this topic. If you have more ideas, feel free to share them.

[PaulWoitaschek]

Super great to see your engagement! And I totally understand your frustration.

I won't expect sonatype to transfer any ownership. What is the thing with fabric8? Why do we need that for publishing from jitpack and why does it not work?

[jmini]

io.fabric8:docker-maven-plugin is starting docker to run integration tests.

Somehow when jitpack is building it doesn't run the tests anyway but the build is failing with:

[ERROR] Failed to execute goal io.fabric8:docker-maven-plugin:0.30.0:start (start) on project gitlab4j-api: Execution start of goal io.fabric8:docker-maven-plugin:0.30.0:start failed: No <dockerHost> given, no DOCKER_HOST environment variable, no read/writable '/var/run/docker.sock' or '//./pipe/docker_engine' and no external provider like Docker machine configured -> [Help 1]
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR] 
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/PluginExecutionException

Using testcontainers would be better anyway.

[jmini]

Good news 🎉
I have been in touch with @jabby to get the permission to create releases.
I am not sure how long this will take, but I hope I will be able to create releases soon.

[jmini]

To get the latest version jitpack builds are now working.

Usage with gradle:

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven {
        url "https://jitpack.io"
        content {
            includeGroup "com.github.gitlab4j"
        }
    }
}

dependencies {
    // ...
    implementation 'com.github.gitlab4j:gitlab4j-api:main-SNAPSHOT'
    // ...
}

Usage with maven:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>jitpack.io</id>
    <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

<dependencies>
  <dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.gitlab4j</groupId>
    <artifactId>gitlab4j-api</artifactId>
    <version>main-SNAPSHOT</version>
  </dependency>
  <!-- ... -->
</dependencies>

Usage with jbang:

The example script uses Jbang where loading the dependency is really easy. You just need to declare this dependency:

//DEPS https://github.com/gitlab4j/gitlab4j-api/tree/main#:SNAPSHOT

Instead of:

//DEPS org.gitlab4j:gitlab4j-api:5.3.0

And then Jbang does the work of adding the additional repository for you.

---

If you are interested by the 6.x branch you can use the version 6.x-SNAPSHOT:

	dependencies {
	        implementation 'com.github.gitlab4j:gitlab4j-api:6.x-SNAPSHOT'
	}

	<dependency>
	    <groupId>com.github.gitlab4j</groupId>
	    <artifactId>gitlab4j-api</artifactId>
	    <version>6.x-SNAPSHOT</version>
	</dependency>

---

If you want a specific version, you can reference it by its commit (has to be newer as ab9b98c, 7 November 2023).

Example for commit 6561c93:

	dependencies {
	        implementation 'com.github.gitlab4j:gitlab4j-api:6561c93aaf'
	}

	<dependency>
	    <groupId>com.github.gitlab4j</groupId>
	    <artifactId>gitlab4j-api</artifactId>
	    <version>6561c93aaf</version>
	</dependency>

[jmini]

I was granted the permission to create a release this week.

I have published two new versions on maven central:

• 5.3.0
• 6.0.0-rc.3

[PaulWoitaschek]

Super cool, thank you! <3