Hosting a Maven repository on github

I have a fork of a small open sourced library that I'm working on github. I'd like to make it available to other developers via maven, but I don't want to run my own Nexus server, and because it's a fork I can't easily deploy it to oss.sonatype.org.

What I'd like to do is to deploy it to github so that others can access it using maven. What's the best way to do this?

The best solution I've been able to find consists of these steps:

1. Create a branch called mvn-repo to host your maven artifacts.
2. Use the github site-maven-plugin to push your artifacts to github.
3. Configure maven to use your remote mvn-repo as a maven repository.

There are several benefits to using this approach:

• Maven artifacts are kept separate from your source in a separate branch called mvn-repo, much like github pages are kept in a separate branch called gh-pages (if you use github pages)
• Unlike some other proposed solutions, it doesn't conflict with your gh-pages if you're using them.
• Ties in naturally with the deploy target so there are no new maven commands to learn. Just use mvn deploy as you normally would

The typical way you deploy artifacts to a remote maven repo is to use mvn deploy, so let's patch into that mechanism for this solution.

First, tell maven to deploy artifacts to a temporary staging location inside your target directory. Add this to your pom.xml:

<distributionManagement>
    <repository>
        <id>internal.repo</id>
        <name>Temporary Staging Repository</name>
        <url>file://${project.build.directory}/mvn-repo</url>
    </repository>
</distributionManagement>

<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>
</plugins>

Now try running mvn clean deploy. You'll see that it deployed your maven repository to target/mvn-repo. The next step is to get it to upload that directory to GitHub.

Add your authentication information to ~/.m2/settings.xml so that the github site-maven-plugin can push to GitHub:

<!-- NOTE: MAKE SURE THAT settings.xml IS NOT WORLD READABLE! -->
<settings>
  <servers>
    <server>
      <id>github</id>
      <username>YOUR-USERNAME</username>
      <password>YOUR-PASSWORD</password>
    </server>
  </servers>
</settings>

(As noted, please make sure to chmod 700 settings.xml to ensure no one can read your password in the file. If someone knows how to make site-maven-plugin prompt for a password instead of requiring it in a config file, let me know.)

Then tell the GitHub site-maven-plugin about the new server you just configured by adding the following to your pom:

<properties>
    <!-- github server corresponds to entry in ~/.m2/settings.xml -->
    <github.global.server>github</github.global.server>
</properties>

Finally, configure the site-maven-plugin to upload from your temporary staging repo to your mvn-repo branch on Github:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>com.github.github</groupId>
            <artifactId>site-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>0.11</version>
            <configuration>
                <message>Maven artifacts for ${project.version}</message>  <!-- git commit message -->
                <noJekyll>true</noJekyll>                                  <!-- disable webpage processing -->
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/mvn-repo</outputDirectory> <!-- matches distribution management repository url above -->
                <branch>refs/heads/mvn-repo</branch>                       <!-- remote branch name -->
                <includes><include>**/*</include></includes>
                <repositoryName>YOUR-REPOSITORY-NAME</repositoryName>      <!-- github repo name -->
                <repositoryOwner>YOUR-GITHUB-USERNAME</repositoryOwner>    <!-- github username  -->
            </configuration>
            <executions>
              <!-- run site-maven-plugin's 'site' target as part of the build's normal 'deploy' phase -->
              <execution>
                <goals>
                  <goal>site</goal>
                </goals>
                <phase>deploy</phase>
              </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

The mvn-repo branch does not need to exist, it will be created for you.

Now run mvn clean deploy again. You should see maven-deploy-plugin "upload" the files to your local staging repository in the target directory, then site-maven-plugin committing those files and pushing them to the server.

[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]                                                                         
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building DaoCore 1.3-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
...
[INFO] --- maven-deploy-plugin:2.5:deploy (default-deploy) @ greendao ---
Uploaded: file:///Users/mike/Projects/greendao-emmby/DaoCore/target/mvn-repo/com/greendao-orm/greendao/1.3-SNAPSHOT/greendao-1.3-20121223.182256-3.jar (77 KB at 2936.9 KB/sec)
Uploaded: file:///Users/mike/Projects/greendao-emmby/DaoCore/target/mvn-repo/com/greendao-orm/greendao/1.3-SNAPSHOT/greendao-1.3-20121223.182256-3.pom (3 KB at 1402.3 KB/sec)
Uploaded: file:///Users/mike/Projects/greendao-emmby/DaoCore/target/mvn-repo/com/greendao-orm/greendao/1.3-SNAPSHOT/maven-metadata.xml (768 B at 150.0 KB/sec)
Uploaded: file:///Users/mike/Projects/greendao-emmby/DaoCore/target/mvn-repo/com/greendao-orm/greendao/maven-metadata.xml (282 B at 91.8 KB/sec)
[INFO] 
[INFO] --- site-maven-plugin:0.7:site (default) @ greendao ---
[INFO] Creating 24 blobs
[INFO] Creating tree with 25 blob entries
[INFO] Creating commit with SHA-1: 0b8444e487a8acf9caabe7ec18a4e9cff4964809
[INFO] Updating reference refs/heads/mvn-repo from ab7afb9a228bf33d9e04db39d178f96a7a225593 to 0b8444e487a8acf9caabe7ec18a4e9cff4964809
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 8.595s
[INFO] Finished at: Sun Dec 23 11:23:03 MST 2012
[INFO] Final Memory: 9M/81M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Visit github.com in your browser, select the mvn-repo branch, and verify that all your binaries are now there.

Congratulations!

You can now deploy your maven artifacts to a poor man's public repo simply by running mvn clean deploy.

There's one more step you'll want to take, which is to configure any poms that depend on your pom to know where your repository is. Add the following snippet to any project's pom that depends on your project:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>YOUR-PROJECT-NAME-mvn-repo</id>
        <url>https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/YOUR-PROJECT-NAME/raw/mvn-repo/</url>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
            <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
        </snapshots>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Now any project that requires your jar files will automatically download them from your github maven repository.

Edit: to avoid the problem mentioned in the comments ('Error creating commit: Invalid request. For 'properties/name', nil is not a string.'), make sure you state a name in your profile on github.

Don't use GitHub as a Maven Repository.

Edit: This option gets a lot of down votes, but no comments as to why. This is the correct option regardless of the technical capabilities to actually host on GitHub. Hosting on GitHub is wrong for all the reasons outlined below and without comments I can't improve the answer to clarify your issues.

Best Option - Collaborate with the Original Project

The best option is to convince the original project to include your changes and stick with the original.

Alternative - Maintain your own Fork

Since you have forked an open source library, and your fork is also open source, you can upload your fork to Maven Central (read Guide to uploading artifacts to the Central Repository) by giving it a new groupId and maybe a new artifactId.

Only consider this option if you are willing to maintain this fork until the changes are incorporated into the original project and then you should abandon this one.

Really consider hard whether a fork is the right option. Read the myriad Google results for 'why not to fork'

Reasoning

Bloating your repository with jars increases download size for no benefit

A jar is an output of your project, it can be regenerated at any time from its inputs, and your GitHub repo should contain only inputs.

Don't believe me? Then check Google results for 'dont store binaries in git'.

GitHub's help Working with large files will tell you the same thing. Admittedly jar's aren't large but they are larger than the source code and once a jar has been created by a release they have no reason to be versioned - that is what a new release is for.

Defining multiple repos in your pom.xml slows your build down by Number of Repositories times Number of Artifacts

Stephen Connolly says:

> If anyone adds your repo they impact their build performance > as they now have another repo to check artifacts against... It's not a big > problem if you only have to add one repo... But the problem grows and the next > thing you know your maven build is checking 50 repos for every artifact and > build time is a dog.

That's right! Maven needs to check every artifact (and its dependencies) defined in your pom.xml against every Repository you have defined, as a newer version might be available in any of those repositories.

Try it out for yourself and you will feel the pain of a slow build.

The best place for artifacts is in Maven Central, as its the central place for jars, and this means your build will only ever check one place.

You can read some more about repositories at Maven's documentation on Introduction to Repositories

You can use JitPack (free for public Git repositories) to expose your GitHub repository as a Maven artifact. Its very easy. Your users would need to add this to their pom.xml:

1. Add repository:

<repository>
    <id>jitpack.io</id>
    <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
</repository>

2. Add dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.User</groupId>
    <artifactId>Repo name</artifactId>
    <version>Release tag</version>
</dependency>

As answered elsewhere the idea is that JitPack will build your GitHub repo and will serve the jars. The requirement is that you have a build file and a GitHub release.

The nice thing is that you don't have to handle deployment and uploads. Since you didn't want to maintain your own artifact repository its a good match for your needs.

Since 2019 you can now use the new functionality called Github package registry.

Basically the process is:

• generate a new personal access token from the github settings

• add repository and token info in your settings.xml

• deploy using

   mvn deploy -Dregistry=https://maven.pkg.github.com/yourusername -Dtoken=yor_token  
  

Another alternative is to use any web hosting with webdav support. You will need some space for this somewhere of course but it is straightforward to set up and a good alternative to running a full blown nexus server.

add this to your build section

     <extensions>
        <extension>
        <artifactId>wagon-webdav-jackrabbit</artifactId>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.wagon</groupId>
        <version>2.2</version>
        </extension>
    </extensions>

Add something like this to your distributionManagement section

<repository>
	<id>release.repo</id>
	<url>dav:http://repo.jillesvangurp.com/releases/</url>
</repository>

Finally make sure to setup the repository access in your settings.xml

add this to your servers section

    <server>
        <id>release.repo</id>
        <username>xxxx</username>
        <password>xxxx</password>
    </server>

and a definition to your repositories section

            <repository>
                <id>release.repo</id>
                <url>http://repo.jillesvangurp.com/releases</url>
                <releases>
                    <enabled>true</enabled>
                </releases>
                <snapshots>
                    <enabled>false</enabled>
                </snapshots>
            </repository>

Finally, if you have any standard php hosting, you can use something like sabredav to add webdav capabilities.

Advantages: you have your own maven repository Downsides: you don't have any of the management capabilities in nexus; you need some webdav setup somewhere

As an alternative, Bintray provides free hosting of maven repositories. That's probably a good alternative to Sonatype OSS and Maven Central if you absolutely don't want to rename the groupId. But please, at least make an effort to get your changes integrated upstream or rename and publish to Central. It makes it much easier for others to use your fork.

If you have only aar or jar file itself, or just don't want to use plugins - I've created a simple shell script. You can achieve the same with it - publishing your artifacts to Github and use it as public Maven repo.

I'd like to add another alternative, a Gradle plugin I've been working on lately: magik.

Basically it allows to publish directly on a github repository acting as a maven repository.

I came here looking to do the same thing, unlitmately host my Maven repository for free, but after more research I ended up here: https://jfrog.com/start-free/

The setup was quite strightforward, has a good free tier which will serve me for the forseeable future, and has additional (paid for) upgrades which may well come in handy in the future.

So far I am very pleased indeed !