[🐛 Bug]: `maven-metadata.xml` is not up-to-date in Maven Staging repo

[valfirst]

What happened?

1. Check any artifact in Maven Staging repo, for instance: https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/org/seleniumhq/selenium/selenium-api/

2. See the versions available (the latest one is 4.16.0-SNAPSHOT for now):

3. Check the content of maven-metadata.xml:

<metadata modelVersion="1.1.0">
    <groupId>org.seleniumhq.selenium</groupId>
    <artifactId>selenium-api</artifactId>
    <versioning>
  	  <latest>2.0-SNAPSHOT</latest>
  	  <release/>
  	  <versions>
  		  <version>2.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
  	  </versions>
  	  <lastUpdated>20140701151848</lastUpdated>
    </versioning>
</metadata>

Expected:

• latest should point to the actual latest version (4.16.0-SNAPSHOT as for now)
• all available versions should be listed in versions

How can we reproduce the issue?

Checkout any maven-metadata.xml, for instance: https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/org/seleniumhq/selenium/selenium-api/maven-metadata.xml

Relevant log output

N/A

Operating System

Any

Selenium version

Snapshot versions are published incorrectly

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

N/A

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

N/A

Are you using Selenium Grid?

No response

[github-actions]

@valfirst, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[diemol]

I do not know who has to update this. Shouldn't it be the staging repo itself?

[valfirst]

It seems it's a responsibility of build tool/upload script: https://support.sonatype.com/hc/en-us/articles/213464638-Why-are-the-latest-and-release-tags-in-maven-metadata-xml-not-being-updated-after-deploying-artifacts-

[titusfortner]

That page also indicates that "latest" property is only intended for plugins, and shouldn't be relied on for non-plugin artifacts. If you have a PR to fix it we can, but looks like user is supposed to use version ranges or REST call.

[valfirst]

If you have a PR to fix it we can

I've checked CI, it seems it's either Bazel issue or some misconfiguration.

but looks like user is supposed to use version ranges or REST call.

Most of Java users rely on build tools (Maven, Gradle), version ranges won't if both release and snapshots repos are configured, because maven-metadata.xml will be checked. REST call works, but it's painful and every user need to implement it, like: https://github.com/appium/java-client/blob/a8737ab7860ffc3ede3c2a73f0fa5cfca9d0c134/.github/workflows/gradle.yml#L61-L64

[github-actions]

This issue is looking for contributors.

Please comment below or reach out to us through our IRC/Slack/Matrix channels if you are interested.

[diemol]

I am now using nightlies to run our examples and bumped into this issue. I think the problem is (using your link):

Maven will update the "release" field only during the following scenarios:

    Maven 2.x deploys using -DupdateReleaseInfo=true
    Maven 3.x deploys a non-snapshot artifact

I thought it was a problem of having old metadata, so I deleted it, but after deploying a new snapshot, I could see that metadata was not being pushed at all.

I will ask Simon how the Bazel rules for Java can help.

[diemol]

When we do a stable release, Simon tells me we do not upload any maven-metadata.xml to the repository. This means it is the repository itself doing the work of updating the metadata.

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 280 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 14 days.