Hello, I want to share some updates from my side on what I have been working on for the last couple of months. In particular, I expect certain changes to have an ASF-wide impact! Sounds interesting? Continue reading.
*What is up with `maven-changes-plugin`?* The current `site` phase takes ages to complete. This significantly hinders releases and more frequent website updates. The main culprit is `site` phase plugins need to be executed for 50+ modules. As my investigation turned out, we can actually either drop or replace all such plugins, except one: `maven-changes-plugin`, that is used to generate the changelog from `changes.xml`. `maven-changes-plugin` is also a major source of merge-conflicts in between feature branches and PRs, since they all need to touch to the same file: `changes.xml`. *Is it only about overhauling the `site` phase?* No. As we agreed on, we want to migrate the issue tracking from JIRA to GitHub Issues. `maven-changes-plugin` blocks us there too, since it only supports a single issue tracking system. *Enter `log4j-changelog`* I have written simple Java command line applications to perform the following tasks: 1. Populate `src/site/changelog/<releaseVersion>/<issueId>_<description>.xml` files from `changes.xml` 2. Generate AsciiDoc-formatted changelog files from the populated `src/site/changelog` 3. Make `src/site/changelog` ready before a release These technical tools will not only help us to replace `maven-changes-plugin`, support multiple issue trackers, and enable great simplification of the `site` phase, due to its one-changelog-file-per-issue convention, they will make changelog merge conflicts a thing of the past too! Okay, great! Since the `maven-changes-plugin` successor is there, what are we exactly waiting for? *Enter `log4j-tools`* I have implemented `log4j-changelog` as a not-deployed Log4j module, though Ralph insisted on not having this within Log4j to make it available for other Log4j projects and since it needs to be shared by (and hence, sync'ed in between) `release-2.x` and `master` branches. He proposed that we host this in `log4j-tools` <https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j-tools>. Since `log4j-tools` repository never had a release before, I let my imagination go wild there: - Adopted the Maven-recommended way of setting up a BOM: `logging-parent` parents `log4j-bom`, which parents `log4j-parent`, which parents all other modules. There the effective POM of `log4j-bom` is stripped-down from its parent and all unnecessary weight via `flatten-maven-plugin` voodoo. - Switched to CI-friendly Maven versioning <https://maven.apache.org/maven-ci-friendly.html> - Configured GitHub Actions to make releases! (As you might guess, if experiment succeeds, I will port all these fancy stuff to Log4j too.) *Releasing... via GitHub Actions!?!* ASF project artifacts are required to be signed and up until now that has **always** been performed manually by release maintainers. Releasing **and signing** artifacts in a fully-automated fashion in CI... "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" But I am not! I have shared a technical implementation proposal in `members@`, got approval from ASF Security Team head Mark J. Cox <https://lists.apache.org/thread/t1fbn11m70sy9df86xgzzp0fllg38p9q>, and now I am waiting for INFRA-23996 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-23996> to be implemented! What does this effectively mean? To the best of my knowledge, *`log4j-tools` will be the first ASF project ever that is released via CI!* This will enable various release automation enhancements, not to mention the software supply chain traceability it will bring as well. *Where are we now?* Once INFRA-23996 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-23996> is implemented and `log4j-tools` (containing `log4j-changelog`) is released, the following PR train will be merged: - #1145 <https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/pull/1145> – replace `maven-changes-plugin` with `log4j-changelog` - #1166 <https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/pull/1166> – simplify `site` goal (`./mvnw site` takes ~30 seconds!) - #1172 <https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j2/pull/1172> – update sources, docs, links, etc. to reflect the migration from JIRA to GitHub Issues *What are we waiting for?* We *_can_* release `log4j-tools` without INFRA-23996 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-23996>, the old school way, i.e., via running `./mvnw deploy` from a personal laptop. That said, I believe releasing `log4j-tools` via CI will have a way bigger impact beyond the scope of Log4j, and `log4j-tools` constitutes a great candidate for such an experiment. We are all set: `log4j-tools` GitHub Actions workflows <https://github.com/apache/logging-log4j-tools/blob/master/.github/workflows/build.yml> are ready to make an automated release. Infra team has indicated in INFRA-23996 <https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/INFRA-23996> that they will implement it in a couple of days. Given how close we are to an automated release, I will wait for my grand infra revamp scheme to unfold.
