How to handle version updates during a staged release?

[Fabian Christ <ch...@googlemail.com>]

Hi,

I have a question regarding the version handling when a release of
some component is staged.

When releasing a component the -SNAPSHOT is removed from the version
and the version counter is increased for the ongoing development. Now
other components that depend on this released component can use the
stable release number.

What do we do for the time period when the release of the component is
in staging mode? In this situation the released version is not yet
available from a public repo. The build would fail if other components
are already configured to use the stable version. But when we try to
release a set of components with dependencies between them we have to
configure the dependencies to use the stable release numbers which are
not yet available. The build would be broken during a pending release.

I am currently trying to release the Entity Hub. But this requires to
first release the parent POM, some commons modules and a data bundle.
It would be nice to release them all at once but this would cause the
described problem because of the dependencies between them.

How is this done e.g. in Sling? Is the solution to avoid such a
situation and release dependent components each by each by waiting
until one is released and available from Maven central before
releasing the next one? As each release "costs" at least 72 hours this
could take some time.

Best,
 - Fabian

-- 
Fabian
http://twitter.com/fctwitt

Re: How to handle version updates during a staged release?

[Fabian Christ <ch...@googlemail.com>]

Good morning,

sometimes you should just stop working and go to sleep and the next
morning you understand. Today I can answer my question myself ;)

2012/5/31 Fabian Christ <ch...@googlemail.com>:
> What do we do for the time period when the release of the component is
> in staging mode? In this situation the released version is not yet
> available from a public repo. The build would fail if other components
> are already configured to use the stable version. But when we try to
> release a set of components with dependencies between them we have to
> configure the dependencies to use the stable release numbers which are
> not yet available. The build would be broken during a pending release.

The Maven release plugin will take care of this. The released
artifacts use the stable versions and for development the versions are
increased (with -SNAPSHOT). So the build never gets broken. In our
release process we could change the SNAPSHOT versions of dependencies
once they are released and available to the stable versions.

Best,
 - Fabian