JGitFlow Archives - DEVOPS DONE RIGHT

Introduction

As a DevOps I need a smooth way to release the java application, so I compared two maven plugin that are used to release the java application and in the end I found that Jgit-flow plugin is far better than maven-release plugin on the basis of following points:

Maven-release plugin creates .backup and release.properties files to your working directory which can be committed mistakenly, when they should not be. jgit-flow maven plugin doesn’t create these files or any other file in your working directory.
Maven-release plugin create two tags.
Maven-release plugin does a build in the prepare goal and a build in the perform goal causing tests to run 2 times but jgit-flow maven plugin builds project once so tests run only once.
If something goes wrong during the maven plugin execution, It become very tough to roll it back, on the other hand jgit-flow maven plugin makes all changes into the branch and if you want to roll back just delete that branch.
jgit-flow maven plugin doesn’t run site-deploy
jgit-flow maven plugin provides option to turn on/off maven deployment
jgit-flow maven plugin provides option to turn on/off remote pushes/tagging
jgit-flow maven plugin keeps the master branch always at latest release version.

Now let’s see how to integrate Jgit-flow maven plugin and use it

How to use Jgit-flow maven Plugin for Release

Follow the flowing steps

Add the following lines in your pom.xml for source code management access
```
   scm:git:
  scm:git:git:
```

Add these line to resolve the Jgit-flow maven plugin and put the other option that will be required during the build

com.atlassian.maven.plugins
maven-jgitflow-plugin
1.0-m4.3
        
true
false
true
true
true
true
true
true
          
master-test
deploy-test

Above code snippet will perform following steps:

- Maven will resolve the jgitflow plug-in dependency
- In the configuration section, we describe how jgit-flow plug-in will behave.
- pushRelease XML tag to enable and disable jgit-flow from releasing the intermediate branches into the git or not.
- keepBranch XML tag to enable and disable the plug-in for keep the intermediate branch or not.
- noTag XMl tag to enable and disable the plug-in to create the that tag in git.
- allowUntracked XML tag to whether allow untracked file during the checking.
- flowInitContext XML tag is used to override the default and branch name of the jgit-flow plug-in
- In above code snippet, there is only two branches, master from where that code will be pulled and a intermediate branch that will be used by the jgit-flow plug-in. as I have discussed that jgit-flow plug-in uses the branches to keep it records. so development branch will be created by the plug-in that resides in the local not remotely, to track the release version etc.

To put your releases into the repository manager add these lines

<distributionManagement>
  <repository>
    <id><auth id></id>
    <url><repo url of repository managers></url>
  </repository>
  <snapshotRepository>
    <id><auth id></id>
    <url><repo url of repository managers></url>
  </snapshotRepository>
</distributionManagement>

Put the following lines into your m2/settings.xml with your repository manager credentials

<settings>
  <servers>
    <server>
        <id><PUT THE ID OF THE REPOSITORY OR SNAPSHOTS ID HERE></id>
       <username><USERNAME></username>
       <password><PASSWORD></password>
    </server>
  </servers>
</settings>

Start Release jgit-flow maven plugin command

To start the new release execute jgitflow:release-start.

Finish Release jgit-flow maven plugin command

To finish new release, execute mvn jgitflow:release-finish.
For a example I have created a repository in github.com. for testing and two branch master-test and deploy-test. It is assumed that you have configured maven and git your system.

In the deploy-test branch run following command
$ mvn clean -Dmaven.test.skip=true install jgitflow:release-start

This command will take input from you for release version and create a release branch with release/. then it will push this release branch into github repository for temporarily because we are not saving the intermediate branched

Now At the end run this command
$ mvn -Dmaven.test.skip=true jgitflow:release-finish
after finishing this command it will delete release/ from local and remote.

Now you can check the changes in pom file by jgitflow. in the above snapshot, it is master-test branch, you can see in the tag it has removed the snapshot and also increased the version. It hold the current version of the application.

And in the deploy-test branch it show you new branch on which developers are working on

At Opstree we have started a new initiative called SHOA, Saturday Hands On Activity. Under this program we pick up a concept, tool or technology and do a hands on activity. At the end of the day whatever we do is followed by a blog or series of blog that we have understood during the day.

Since this is the first Hands On Activity so we are starting with Build & Release.

What we intend to do

Setup Build & Release for project under git repository https://github.com/OpsTree/ContinuousIntegration.

What all we will be doing to achieve it

Finalize a SCM tool that we are going to use puppet/chef/ansible.
Automated setup of Jenkins using SCM tool.
Automated setup of Nexus/Artifactory/Archiva using SCM tool.
Automated setup of Sonar using SCM tool.
Dev Environment setup using SCM tool: Since this is a web app project so our Devw443 environment will have Nginx & tomcat.
QA Environment setup using SCM tool: Since this is a web app project so our QA environment will have Nginx & tomcat.
Creation of various build jobs
- Code Stability Job.
- Code Quality Job.
- Code Coverage Job.
- Functional Test Job on dev environment.
Creation of release Job.
Creation of deployment job to do deployment on Dev & QA environment.