[FIXED] Maven release avoid huge repository checkout

Issue

I try to release a maven project to the new version.

Therefore I use

mvn release:prepare release:perform

To release that version is not a big deal. Unfortunately it is a big project and have more than 700 releases in the past. Every release have its own tag.

Example:

repo 
 + branches
 + tags
    + project-1.0.0
    + project-1.0.1
    + project-1.0.2
    + project-1.0.3
         (...)
    + project-7.9.2
 + trunk
    + src
    + pom.xml

Using the release-plugin it download all the tags making it about 190 GB of code and old tags.

This is a problem because it takes a hours to checkout all the tags.

I can not simply "remove old tags". This will make the release:prepare release:perform brake the release-process having the message:

[INFO] de.e_nexus.projekt.xdiff ........................... SKIPPED ?
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ?
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE    ?
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ?
[INFO] Total time: 05:52 min (Wall Clock)   ?
[INFO] Finished at: 2022-11-10T22:23:19+01:00   ?
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ?
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-release-plugin:2.5.3:prepare (default-cli) on project projekt: Unable to tag SCM  ?
[ERROR] Provider message:   ?
[ERROR] The svn tag command failed. ?
[ERROR] Command output: ?
[ERROR] svn: E160013: File not found: revision 3861, path '/repo/tags/projekt-1.0.0'    ?
[ERROR] -> [Help 1] ?
[ERROR] ?
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch. ?
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.  ?
[ERROR] ?
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:   ?
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoFailureException

---

How to get rid of old tags AND be able to release using mavens release plugin?

Solution

Check out only the trunk of your project. You don't need to checkout all your tags and branches to create a new tag out of trunk.

If I should only checkout trunk only, how is the release-process capable of creating release-tags? How can you tell the error-message pointing out of trunk-folder?

Maven uses a Subversion client to create a new tag in the repository. This does not require all the tags to be present on the client side. Check examples in SVNBook | Tags. The examples show that you can create a 'URL to URL' tag (no working copy at all) or a 'working copy to URL' tag (tagging the current state of the working copy). No need to have the all the tags locally.

Additional examples are also available in SVNBook | svn copy.

Since tagging is a very common operation, I'm sure that Maven knows how to do it properly. But you need to examine and fix your configuration.

PS Great multi-display setup in your profile @Grim!

Answered By - bahrep
Answer Checked By - David Marino (JavaFixing Volunteer)