Maven is really awful. I hate it.

But it is by far the best tool available… Therefore I am using it for several years now. And since it is a tool one has to struggle with, I have invested a lot of time into optimizing my build environment. So I know Maven quite well now – better than I wanted…

And of course I am using Git. And I really love it. But unfortunately Git is just a second class citizen in Maven land. The basic things work, but other things don’t (like mvn release:branch).

I have created this checklist for doing a release. Just take a look and compare it with the steps you are doing. I’d like to hear some opinions and ideas for improvements.

Small scripts

I use some scripts that make my life easier:

• git-publish-branch

The setup

The version numbers

The upcoming release will be 1.0.0 (the first release for this project). Therefore no maintenance branches exist yet.

Currently the master branch is set to 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.

The branches

Release: What has to be done

The master branch contains the latest peace of software that shall be released (that means that all bugfixes have been merged in from the maint* branches).

• Tag for the release
• Creating a new maint-* branch with updated version number
• Updating the version number for master
• Probably updated the version number for next, too

And: Of course release one version of our software…

The Checklist

1: Ensure all bugfixes have been merged into master

git log master..maint-[VERSION]

2: Creating the maint-branch

git checkout master
git checkout -b maint-1.0.0
git publish-branch

3: Releasing on maint

mvn release:prepare
mvn release:perform

4: Merging maint to master

git checkout master
git merge maint-1.0.0

5: Updating the version on master

mvn versions:set -DnewVersion=1.1.0-SNAPSHOT -DgenerateBackupPoms=false
git commit -a -m "preparing for next major release: updated version in master"

6: Merging master to next

git checkout next
git merge master

That merge has probably one merge conflict: The version in the pom.xml. Just keep the value of the next branch.

7: Updating the version for next (optional/if necessary)

mvn versions:set -DnewVersion=2.0.0-SNAPSHOT -DgenerateBackupPoms=false
git commit -a -m "preparing release: updated version in next"

8: Pushing the changes

git push

The result

Now there are three branches with different version numbers: