Hi guys! I need guidance on how to deploy SNAPSHOT...

# library-development

[Shreyash Kore]

Hi guys! I need guidance on how to deploy SNAPSHOT builds now that OSS doesn't allow creating new accounts? I have my account on Central and was created relatively recently. I want to publish SNAPSHOT versions of my project . The only way I could find is to contact Maven to get my lib published at OSS. I would appreciate any help.

[mbonnin]

There are no SNAPSHOTs with the new publishing flow, you'll have to host them somewhere else

[Shreyash Kore]

Can you recommend any alternatives? I would love to have the experimental branch to be published as SNAPSHOT.

[mbonnin]

At Apollo, we started publishing nightly previews on Google Cloud Storage: https://github.com/apollographql/apollo-kotlin/blob/main/build-logic/src/main/kotlin/Publishing.kt#L371

[mbonnin]

I actually like that because, unlike SNAPSHOTs, you can control the retention of your artifacts

[mbonnin]

Builds using previews are more reproducable than SNAPSHOTs (until the artifacts are eventually removed)

[mbonnin]

Downside is it's another infra to maintain and it can have a cost if your repo is super popular. I think if you reach that point it's a good problem to have but still something to keep in mind

[Tgo1014]

JitPack?

[mbonnin]

JitPack could work for SNAPSHOTs

[Shreyash Kore]

Wow... Thanks for this. For my hobby library, I think this would be overkill 😅

[Shreyash Kore]

I can't use JitPack as it doesn't support multiplatform projects yet.

[mbonnin]

For my hobby library, I think this would be overkill

It's not that hard really

[mbonnin]

GCS also has options to manage the retention automatically

[Shreyash Kore]

I went through your Publishing.kt. Seems like there's lot for me to learn there 🙂. One last question from my side... How these SNAPSHOTs will be consumed? Which repository do need to declare? Any other setup needed?

[mbonnin]

Yea, don't look at Publishing.kt , there's way too much stuff in there 😅

[mbonnin]

Just look at the tweet for publishing. For consuming, it's just a maven repo: https://www.apollographql.com/docs/kotlin#previews

[Shreyash Kore]

Oh got it. Thank u very much 👍

[eygraber]

I'm worried this is going to be a big issue if a lot of libraries start doing this and I have to add a ton of custom repositories to my projects.

[CLOVIS]

If you're using GitLab, you can publish to the built-in Maven registry from CI like this:

// When running in GitLab CI, uses the auto-created CI variables to configure the GitLab Maven Registry.
// For more information on the variables and their values, see:
// - <https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/maven_repository/>
// - <https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/variables/predefined_variables.html>
publishing {
	repositories {
		val projectId = System.getenv("CI_PROJECT_ID") ?: return@repositories
		val token = System.getenv("CI_JOB_TOKEN") ?: return@repositories
		val api = System.getenv("CI_API_V4_URL") ?: return@repositories

		maven {
			name = "GitLab"
			url = uri("$api/projects/$projectId/packages/maven")

			credentials(HttpHeaderCredentials::class.java) {
				name = "Job-Token"
				value = token
			}

			authentication {
				create<HttpHeaderAuthentication>("header")
			}
		}
	}
}

[CLOVIS]

@eygraber this should mostly be used for snapshots, keeping stable versions on Central, so you should very rarely need to commit any of these repositories.

[eygraber]

What I like about Sonatype's current SNAPSHOT system is that I have one repo defined and now trying out a snapshot is just adding -SNAPSHOT to the version. I don't have to remember the repo url, add it to the project, etc...

[CLOVIS]

is that true? I'm pretty sure you at least have to define the sonatype snapshots repository, which isn't just mavenCentral()

[eygraber]

Right, I meant that I only need to define a single snapshots repo.

[eygraber]

Technically two, because of s01 but it's constant.