A faster, simpler alternative to maven-release-plugin.

maven-release-plugin has some problems:

• It's inefficient (hence, slow).

  It builds the project multiple times. For projects with long build times, this is a deal-breaker.

• It's cumbersome to use.

  It has a two-step process, with 3 different commands involved (release:prepare, release:perform and release:rollback).

• Its error messages are less than great.

As a result, where I work people simply didn't use it. maven-release-plugin took so long that they preferred to do the release procedure manually -- which is way error prone. Often tags were not created; apps ended up in production with SNAPSHOT dependencies.

release does the same thing as maven-release-plugin, but:

1. It only builds the project once.
2. You execute one command.
3. It has good error messages.

If anything bad happens, it rolls back the stuff it has to in the same way. Tags created get deleted; modifications made to pom.xml are reverted.

This is not a Maven plug-in: it's an application.

release <maven args>

release has no arguments of its own. Everything you pass to it will be forwarded to Maven.

svn (CLI) and mvn must be on $PATH.

1. Create install.properties:

   cp install.properties.example install.properties
   

   Change the value of install.dir to the directory where you want release to be installed (on Windows: backslashes (\) must be escaped (\\).

   install.dir must exist. If it doesn't, please create it or the install script will fail.

2. Run

   ./install    # Unix-like
   

   or

   install      # Windows
   

3. Add ${install.dir}/bin to $PATH.