Weirdities and wonders of the maven-metadata.xml file

[Matt Walsh <mw...@chartwelltechnology.com>]

Hi.

 

Sorry if this is a bit wordy, but I'm confused about how the metadata
file gets updated and downloaded to my local .m2/repository, and the
following describes what I've gone through to try to understand the
problem. I'm not sure if this is a Nexus issue or a Maven issue, so I
thought I'd start with the experts.

 

We just today released a 2.7 version of a project, let's call it
ProjectA, and deployed it to Nexus.

 

I have an archetype that generates another project that's dependent on,
say, version 2.5 of ProjectA. As the final step of creating a new
project from the archetype, it runs the versions:use-lastest-versions.
(I've also tried use-latest-releases with the same results noted below)
to update some dependencies, including ProjectA, to the latest released
version.

 

So I expected when I generated my new project, it would  update the
dependency to version 2.7. However, it only updated it to 2.6. After
some head-scratching, I checked the maven-metadata.xml file in Nexus. It
showed all my deployed versions, with latest=2.6 and release=2.7. So I
figured I was getting the latest instead of the release (hence, the
attempt at 'use-latest-releases' above.)

 

I logged into Nexus and ran Rebuild Metadata. Now, latest=2.7 and
release=2.7. Why wouldn't latest have been updated when 2.7 was added?
Makes no sense. 2.6 was deployed 2 weeks ago.

 

Anyway, with the rebuilt metadata in Nexus, I figured a run of my
archetype would be good, and it would update the dependency to 2.7. No
such luck; still only 2.6. So I tried it again with the -U option. Maven
downloaded the metadata for several plugins, but no other updates. Still
no luck. Checked my local repository, and the metadata in there is old.
I have 3 metadata files:

  maven-metadata-cwh.xml (cwh is the repositoryId of my release
repository, so I assume this comes from there).  It shows latest=2.4 and
release=2.5. 

  maven-metadata-local.xml shows release of 2.5; no latest.

  maven-metadata-nexus.xml shows release of 2.5 and latest of
3.0-SNAPSHOT, and has  versions up through 2.6, 2.7-SNAPSHOT, and
3.0-SNAPSHOT.

 

BTW, the 2.7 release of ProjectA was not performed by me, so there's no
sign of it in my local repository yet. 

 

So I built another project that's dependent on version 2.7 of ProjectA,
thus forcing a download of 2.7 to my local repository. All good.

Reran my archetype and still only updating to 2.6. No change to any of
the local metadata files.

 

So I blew away the ProjectA folder  from my local repository. Reran my
archetype, and voila! Updated dependency version to 2.7. ProjectA folder
in local repository now contains only one metadata file - the nexus one,
which has a latest=3.0-SNAPSHOT and a release=2.7.

 

So, why doesn't the latest version of the metadata get downloaded in a
timely fashion? How do I force it to download, other than by flushing it
from my local?

 

I find it somewhat disconcerting that I can't rely on retrieving the
latest information from the remote repository. And even worse, that I
have to flush my local repository to get updates.

 

Has anyone else encountered this issue?

 

Thanks,
Matt


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