Not a true ivy question, but more of a use case query. I'm curious as to how most people who use Ivy and an artifact repository manager such as artifactory/archiva/nexus, integrate between them with snapshot and release builds.
Thinks I'd like to know are: Snapshots/Releases * Do you use snapshot repositories and then use the repository manager to promote releases from snapshot to release (requires pro version in most cases) * Alternatively do you instead run a separate build with arguments to have ivy publish directly to the release repository? (seems better as it uses ivy directly rather than depending on the management software) Versioning SNAPSHOT or unique * Do you publish latest integration builds with ivy with unique versions (version numbers or timestamps) even to the snapshot repositories * Or do you use the string SNAPSHOT in the version and overwrite each release in the snapshot repository until you make a release? My impressions from looking at how to get Ivy working with artifactory is that the basic setup is a breeze, but configuring everything so that I get the best out of it is going to require a understanding the interactions a bit more. I'm currently trying to get my head around retaining repeatability. My plan is that when builds are done, the current source is copied to a tagging directory and to use ivy:delivery to generate the fully resolved ivy file and then tag the contents with the build number (suggested previously to me on this list). This means I should know exactly what revision each dependency was at when the build was done. The main concern is with using snapshot versions as opposed to unique versions. Resolved ivy files will likely point to revisions such as 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT which could point to an artifact built to any number of integration builds. This pretty much will make doing repeatable integration builds require manual building of anything that's not a build of HEAD. This also makes storing the resolved ivy files much less useful. I may of course be reading a bit too much into the artifactory documentation of http://wiki.jfrog.org/confluence/display/RTF/Local+Repositories, and unique versions in the snapshot repository may not be quite as bad as is made out. Alternatively I was thinking that it might be better to just have different release/integration builds and supply different arguments to ant to have ivy publish to the different repositories. Set the release to snapshot/integration for automated builds that trigger on commits, and set the release with an updated version number each week or as required for an interm release. Seems a bit of a kludge though, as most of the weekly releases are nothing more than glorified snapshots rather than actual releases. -- Regards, Darragh Bailey
