Deploying Maven Artifacts to Googlecode

Recently I need to deploy a snapshot of one of my opensource projects, into a Maven repository so it could be used by another project. Having a quick look around it seemed that I needed to setup a Maven repository such as Archiva or deploy to a site such as java.net. Neither prospect appealed to me very much.

I had a look at Tom's instinct project and noticed that he was using googlecode to host his artifacts. Now that's more like it! I came across this article that Tom had written on how to export artifacts from Ant into subversion. I didn't fancy using Ant as I wanted to go a purely maven route.

Subsequently I came across this excellent blurb on how to deploy artifacts to a WebDAv server. The author goes on to say that "The trick to this one is to realize that when you share a Subversion repository over HTTP(S), it is actually implemented as a superset of WebDAV". Who knew? That basically means you can use your subversion repository on googlecode as a WebDAv repository.

Cool. I implemented his proposed solution and it all worked with minimal fussing around.

So here are the steps I used to get this working:

1. Update your project pom.xml with the following:

<distributionManagement>
      <repository>
          <id>your-reposiotory-id</id>
          <name>your-reposiotory-name</name>
          <url>dav:https://your-googlecode-project/svn/maven/repository</url>
      </repository>
      <snapshotRepository>
              <id>your-snapshot-repository-id</id>
              <url>dav:https://your-googlecode-project/svn/maven/repository-snapshot</url>
              <uniqueVersion>false</uniqueVersion>
      </snapshotRepository>
</distributionManagement>

  <build>
      <extensions>
              <extension>
                      <groupId>org.apache.maven.wagon</groupId>
                      <artifactId>wagon-webdav</artifactId>
                      <version>1.0-beta-2</version>
              </extension>
      </extensions>

2. Update your settings.xml with the following:

<servers>
      <server>
          <id>your-repository-id</id>
          <username>your-googlecode-username</username>
          <password>your-googlecode-password</password>
          <filePermissions>775</filePermissions>
          <directoryPermissions>775</directoryPermissions>
      </server>
  </servers>
</settings>

The repository id from the pom and the server id from the settings.xml link up a repository with it's server properties. The wagon extension in the pom is needed to do the actual upload.

Now to upload your artifact to your maven repository do a:

mvn clean install deploy:deploy

That's about it if it all goes well. If you get an 401 http error or the like check the file and directory permissions under the server tag in your settings.xml.

For a client to access your freshly created maven repository and artifacts, they need to add the following to an active profile in their settings.xml file:

   <profiles>
       <profile>
           <id>active-profile-id</id>
           <repositories>
               <repository>
                   <id>snapshot-repository-id</id>
                   <url>http://your-googlecode-project/svn/maven/repository-snapshot</url>
               </repository>
               <repository>
                   <id>release-repository-id</id>
                   <url>http://your-googlecode-project/svn/maven/repository</url>
               </repository>
           </repositories>
       </profile>
   </profiles>

That should all work and now you can use your googlecode subversion as a maven repository! :)

No SSH - No No Machine

I've been using No Machine to remote into machines for quite a while now and all I can say is that I'll never go back to VNC.

I recently completely reinstalled my fileserver with Ubuntu 8.10 and installed the no machine server in the recommended way. I fired up the client and got a "connection refused on port 22". What thaa?

It had been so long since I did a fresh installation of Ubuntu that I'd forgotten that Ubuntu ships with a SSH client but not the server. I found some useful info here. To get your system upto speed all you need to do is:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server openssh-client

You can test it with:

ssh your_user@localhost

Now your system can frolic in its No Machine goodness! :)