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Making releases easier: automation

As I’m sitting here slogging through the steps needed to release WebWork 2.1.2, I realize that the community is in dire need for an automated release assistant. Basically, I think a tool that could:
  • Post announcements to news sources (TSS, FreshMeat, JavaLobby, blogs, etc)
  • Call an ant task (ant dist) to build the file
  • Upload the file(s) to a target location, such as your java.net project
  • Upload jars to the Maven repository on ibiblio
  • Export documentation from various repositories and place it in CVS

Basically, this all the stuff I have to do to make a simple release. It is pretty painful. I have a feeling people are going to point towards Maven as a potential tool to do this, but we still need the plugins that can do the various tasks. Is anyone working on anything like a java.net uploader module, or a TSS news post module? This could be VERY good for the community.

Anyone interested in starting a project to do this? If I did it myself, it wouldn’t be in Maven but rather in Ant or maybe even plain old Java. But the language isn’t what matters to me — I just want to make releasing early and releasing often actually feasible.

3 Comments on “Making releases easier: automation”

  1. #1 Erik
    on Oct 15th, 2004 at 5:19 am

    Hi,

    We, ops I’m mean Andy Jefferson, did something very similar using Maven.

    It download things from SF CVS, compile, uploads and generates a new release on SF.

    You can contact Andy or look at JPOX CVS to see how is it done.

  2. #2 Brett Porter
    on Oct 16th, 2004 at 1:29 am

    I hear you :)

    Maven does come pretty close to most of these, and if not they are things I’d like to have.
    http://maven.apache.org/reference/developers/releasing-plugins.html
    Generally, the announcement:mail step is done in one go.

    I’d certainly like to look at using RPC to handle the JIRA updates, and post to a blog too.

    If you want to write anything, come and chat to us on the Maven Developer’s list. I’d be happy to take something in plain Java and wrap it up for both Maven and Ant.

  3. #3 Stuart
    on Oct 18th, 2004 at 4:47 am

    My only concern would be spamming. If everyone used it, there could be an awful lot of traffic kicking around on the mentioned sites. Still, it’d save me a load of work too, so sounds good.

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