Custom build tagging with Jenkins, Artifactory, Maven

Question

I'm working on a strategy to tag builds in my continuous integration and delivery pipeline. When a fresh build is produced it then goes through multiple stages of testing; after each stage I would like to tag the build. My idea was to expand on the standard Maven system, so an example would be:

my-artifact-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
my-artifact-1.0-PASSED_TESTS_1.jar
my-artifact-1.0-PASSED_TESTS_2.jar
...
my-artifact-1.0-RELEASE.jar

As a build passes each stage its tag, which is part of its name/version, gets updated. Eventually, after all testing stages the build is tagged as releasable with RELEASE.

I'm using a Jenkins server and storing artifacts on Artifactory (non-Pro) in Maven repositories. My plan is to use separate Maven repositories for each tag type above, and to move an artifact from one to the other as its tag is updated.

My pseudo-code for the promotion looks like:

(1) Download artifacts that passed in Jenkins 
(2) Text-replace the tag (maybe pom.xml as well?)
(3) Upload to new repository
(4) Update the associated Git commit with tag also

I'm not sure how to actually implement this cleanly - is this a common way of doing things? Am I missing something important? Can a Jenkins + Artifactory (non-Pro) + Maven (repos only, Gradle for builds) system accomplish this?

Thanks!

I would suggest to burn in some kind of information into your artifacts (like version control information; build number etc.) and create an artifact based on that build..and that artifact will be promoted...If you like to do what you have described this will change the original artifact...I would suggest to tag your build/artifact in your version control....and promote it by using tags in SVN/Git etc. and i won't use repositories for stages...or you should use non OSS versions of Artifactory/Nexus which support such kind of staging... — khmarbaise

JBaruch JBaruch · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-23T20:18:21

I can see where the idea of adding more metadata to the file names come. Usually, we don't have any other place to add this kind of information, except of the name. But with a proper artifact repository manager (as Artifactory), you don't need it anymore. You can attach any metadata to the artifacts in the repository manager, and then manipulate (e.g. promote) the artifacts based on those properties.

Here's a screencast showing what it takes to add this kind of metadata to the artifacts, and how to promote artifacts based on it.

Custom build tagging with Jenkins, Artifactory, Maven

1 Answers