--- title: "OSS Java and Github actions" url: "https://www.bekk.christmas/post/2019/21/oss-java-and-github-actions" authors: ["Eivind Bergstøl"] published: "2019-12-21" updated: "2024-11-07T13:05:28Z" language: "en-US" type: "article" tags: ["Open source"] --- # OSS Java and Github actions GitHub actions is the new kid on the block. Lets look at a first try in implementing build and release-functionality. ## In short GitHub Actions can be used to automate build and release workflows for open source Java projects, including building on multiple Java versions, publishing snapshots, and releasing tagged builds directly to Maven Central. The setup reduces manual release steps and can use a Maven parent POM or staging plugin to avoid logging into Sonatype for each release. - **For:** Java open source maintainers using Maven and GitHub Actions - **Good to know beforehand:** Basic Maven release setup and knowledge of GitHub Actions _AI-generated_ At Digipost we use several public open source projects that we manage and release on a quite regular basis. We need to simplify the release process for security, release ease and easier onboarding of developers. Lets assume you have all you need to deploy to Maven central. In addition you need a configured `nexus-staging-maven-plugin` or you can use [this parent pom](https://github.com/digipost/digipost-open-super-pom) so that the artifact is released without you needing to log in to [oss.sonatype.com](http://oss.sonatype.com) and click close and release. ## Leveraging open source for our solution I will not give a deep explanation of what GitHub actions is. But what is nice to know is that it can run docker images on linux. With that we can setup an environment that can execute maven. We forked a [nice action](https://github.com/samuelmeuli/action-maven-publish) already in progress and modified it into [the action we need](https://github.com/digipost/action-maven-publish). GitHub, at this time of writing, does neither have organisation secrets or the ability to add repository secrets with api. We wanted to save time and have only one secret per repository in stead of 4. In addition we wanted to deploy both a SNAPSHOT and a release with the same action. Build version is set automatically from either tag-name of branch-name. Now, we need to call this from a workflow added to the repoitory. [We made two workflows pr project](https://github.com/digipost/digipost-html-validator/tree/master/.github/workflows): `build.yml` and `release.yml ## Usage For every push to all branches, we build the project on both Java 1.8 and 11. In addition we build a version on Java 11 and deploy this to Sonatype snapshot-repository. For every tag (GitHub-release) we will build a release and this is published directly to maven central. _PS:_ Sick of all the download progress in Travis, GitHub actions or what not? Starting with Maven 3.6.1 `--no-transfer-progress` will remove the noise leaving only nice readable output. ## Relevant resources recommended by the author - [Digipost open source Java](https://github.com/digipost?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=&type=public&language=java) - [Action maven publish](https://github.com/digipost/action-maven-publish) - [Digipost open super pom](https://github.com/digipost/digipost-open-super-pom)