Using gitub as a maven repository

If you shun the work that comes with uploading JARs to the central maven repository, here’s a simple way to host your own maven repository on github [1].

I’m copying the bare essentials from Christian Kaltepoth’s article, you should read it for the details:

Setting up

—-

$ pwd
/home/ck/workspace/jsf-maven-util
$ cd ..
$ git clone git@github.com:chkal/jsf-maven-util.git jsf-maven-util-pages
$ cd jsf-maven-util-pages

$ git symbolic-ref HEAD refs/heads/gh-pages
$ rm .git/index
$ git clean -fdx 

$ mkdir repository

In the pom.xml:


 
  gh-pages</id&gt
  file:///${basedir}/../jsf-maven-util-pages/repository/

Update 2014.08.27I came across this post [2] which uses the maven-site-plugin to simplify deployment. This post uses a dedicated git branch as a maven repository, which seems cleaner to me. For continuity I’m repeating the instructions with modifications to use the gh-pages branch:

1. Add your github account to ~/.m2/settings.xml:


  
    
      github
      your-github-user-name
      github-password

Then some work in the pom.xml:

   
   github
 
<distributionManagement>
    <repository>
        <id>internal.repo</id>
        <name>Temporary Staging Repository</name>
        <url>file://${project.build.directory}/mvn-repo</url>
    </repository>
</distributionManagement>
 
<build>
 <plugins>
    <plugin>
        <artifactId>maven-deploy-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.8.1</version>
        <configuration>
               <altDeploymentRepository>internal.repo::default::file://${project.build.directory}/mvn-repo</altDeploymentRepository>
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
    
        com.github.github
        site-maven-plugin
        0.9
        
            
            Maven artifacts for ${project.version}
            
            true
            
            ${project.build.directory}/mvn-repo
            
            refs/heads/gh-pages
            <!-- If you remove this then the old artifact will be removed and new 
                one will replace. But with the merge tag you can just release by changing 
                the version -->
            true
            
                **/*
            
            
            YOUR-GITHUB-REPOSITORY-NAME
            
            YOUR-GITHUB-USER
         
         
             
                 
                     site
                 
                 deploy
             
         
    
 </plugins>
</build>