jgit-flow maven plugin to Release Java Application

Introduction

As a DevOps I need a smooth way to release the java application, so I compared two maven plugin that are used to release the java application and in the end I found that Jgit-flow plugin is far better than maven-release plugin on the basis of following points:

• Maven-release plugin creates .backup and release.properties files to your working directory which can be committed mistakenly, when they should not be. jgit-flow maven plugin doesn't create these files or any other file in your working directory.
• Maven-release plugin create two tags.
• Maven-release plugin does a build in the prepare goal and a build in the perform goal causing tests to run 2 times but jgit-flow maven plugin builds project once so tests run only once.
• If something goes wrong during the maven plugin execution, It become very tough to roll it back, on the other hand jgit-flow maven plugin makes all changes into the branch and if you want to roll back just delete that branch.
• jgit-flow maven plugin doesn't run site-deploy
• jgit-flow maven plugin provides option to turn on/off maven deployment
• jgit-flow maven plugin provides option to turn on/off remote pushes/tagging
• jgit-flow maven plugin keeps the master branch always at latest release version.

Now let's see how to integrate Jgit-flow maven plugin and use it

How to use Jgit-flow maven Plugin for Release

Follow the flowing steps 

1. Add the following lines in your pom.xml for source code management access

          
          <scm>
            <connection>scm:git:<Git Repo URL></connection>
            <developerConnection>scm:git:git:<Git Repo URL></developerConnection>
          </scm>
          
    

2. Add these line to resolve the Jgit-flow maven plugin and put the other option that will be required during the build

          
   <build>
       <plugins>
         <plugin>
           <groupId>com.atlassian.maven.plugins</groupId>
           <artifactId>maven-jgitflow-plugin</artifactId>
           <version>1.0-m4.3</version>
           <configuration>
             <pushReleases>true</pushReleases>
             <keepBranch>false</keepBranch>
             <autoVersionSubmodules>true</autoVersionSubmodules>
             <noTag>true</noTag>
             <allowUntracked>true</allowUntracked>
             <pullDevelop>true</pullDevelop>
             <pullMaster>true</pullMaster>
             <allowSnapshots>true</allowSnapshots>
             <flowInitContext>
               <masterBranchName>master-test</masterBranchName>
               <developBranchName>deploy-test</developBranchName>
             </flowInitContext>
           </configuration> 
        </plugin>
     </plugins>
   </build>
            

Above code snippet will perform following steps:
• Maven will resolve the jgitflow plug-in dependency
• In the configuration section, we describe how jgit-flow plug-in will behave.
• pushRelease XML tag to enable and disable jgit-flow from releasing the intermediate branches into the git or not.
• keepBranch XML tag to enable and disable the plug-in for keep the intermediate branch or not.
• noTag XMl tag to enable and disable the plug-in to create the that tag in git.
• allowUntracked XML tag to whether allow untracked file during the checking. 
• flowInitContext XML tag is used to override the default and branch name of the jgit-flow plug-in
• In above code snippet, there is only two branches, master from where that code will be pulled and a intermediate branch that will be used by the jgit-flow plug-in. as I have discussed that jgit-flow plug-in uses the branches to keep it records. so development branch will be created by the plug-in that resides in the local not remotely, to track the release version etc. 
3. To put your your releases into the repository manager add these lines

          
   <distributionManagement>
     <repository>
       <id><auth id></id>
       <url><repo url of repository managers></url>
     </repository>
     <snapshotRepository>
       <id><auth id></id>
       <url><repo url of repository managers></url>
     </snapshotRepository>
   </distributionManagement>
         
    

4. Put the following lines into your m2/settings.xml with your repository manager credentials

           
   <settings>
     <servers>
       <server>
           <id><PUT THE ID OF THE REPOSITORY OR SNAPSHOTS ID HERE></id>
          <username><USERNAME></username>
          <password><PASSWORD></password>
       </server>
     </servers>
   </settings>
         
    

Start Release jgit-flow maven plugin command

To start the new release execute jgitflow:release-start.  

Finish Release jgit-flow maven plugin  command

To finish new release, execute mvn jgitflow:release-finish.

For a example I have created a repository in github.com. for testing and two branch master-test and deploy-test. It is assumed that you have configured maven and git your system.
In the deploy-test branch run following command
$ mvn clean -Dmaven.test.skip=true install jgitflow:release-start


This command will take input from you for release version and create a release branch with release/<version>. then it will push this release branch into github repository for temporarily because we are not saving the intermediate branched

Now At the end run this command
$ mvn -Dmaven.test.skip=true jgitflow:release-finish
after finishing this command it will delete release/<version> from local and remote.

Now you can check the changes in pom file by jgitflow. in the above snapshot, it is master-test branch, you can see in the <version> tag it has removed the snapshot and also increased the version.  It hold the current version of the application.

And in the deploy-test branch it show you new branch on which developers are working on