GitHub Action for automatically publishing Maven packages

This action…

• Executes the Maven deploy lifecycle phase
• Provides Maven with your GPG key and passphrase so your artifacts can be signed using maven-gpg-plugin
• Provides Maven with your Nexus credentials so it can deploy and release your project

It will also use the deploy Maven profile if you've defined one (in case you want to perform certain steps only when deploying).

It's recommended to publish using the Nexus Staging Maven Plugin, which greatly simplifies the process. You can follow this guide for a simple configuration.

Make sure your project is correctly configured for deployment before continuing with the next step.

In your project's GitHub repository, go to Settings → Secrets. On this page, set the following variables:

• nexus_username: Username (not email!) for your Nexus repository manager account
• nexus_password: Password for your Nexus account (or, even better, use the auth token instead)

Signing your artifact using GPG is optional, but recommended. If you choose to use GPG, add the following secrets:

• gpg_private_key: GPG private key for signing the published artifacts:
  • Run gpg --list-secret-keys and copy the ID of the key you'd like to use
  • Export the key with gpg -a --export-secret-keys KEY_ID (and replace KEY_ID with the ID you copied)
• gpg_passphrase: Passphrase for the GPG key

If you sign your artifacts, make sure the maven-gpg-plugin is configured as described here.

Create a GitHub workflow file (e.g. .github/workflows/release.yml) in your repository. Use the following configuration, which tells GitHub to use the Maven Publish Action when running your CI pipeline. The steps are self-explanatory:

name: Release

# Run workflow on commits to the `master` branch
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
    steps:
      - name: Check out Git repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v2

      - name: Install Java and Maven
        uses: actions/setup-java@v1
        with:
          java-version: 11

      - name: Release Maven package
        uses: samuelmeuli/action-maven-publish@v1
        with:
          gpg_private_key: ${{ secrets.gpg_private_key }}
          gpg_passphrase: ${{ secrets.gpg_passphrase }}
          nexus_username: ${{ secrets.nexus_username }}
          nexus_password: ${{ secrets.nexus_password }}

The action will now run every time you push to master.

In addition to the input variables listed above, the action can be configured with the following options:

• directory: Directory of the Maven project to deploy. Default: Repository root
• maven_profiles: Active Maven profiles. Default: "deploy"
• maven_goals_phases: Maven goals and build phases to execute. Default: "clean deploy"
• maven_args: Additional arguments to pass to the Maven command. Default: ""
• server_id: The default Nexus instance used by this action is OSSRH. If you are deploying to a different Nexus instance, you can specify the server ID you've used in your project's POM file (in the nexus-staging-maven-plugin and distributionManagement configurations) here

Suggestions and contributions are always welcome! Please discuss larger changes via issue before submitting a pull request.

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