[HOWTO] Maven Release on JetBrains TeamCity

In one of my last posts I wrote about setting up a C# build job on JetBrains TeamCity 9. Today I’ll show you how to set up a java build job for building and releasing a maven artifact. The activiti wrapper will be used as an example project. It’s a maven project that will be released by using the Maven Release plugin.

Before creating build configuraitons for java projects, the following conditions must be met on the host system:

HINT: The TeamCity instance used here has no external build agents configured and runs under system account.

GIT installed
- Git username and email for system set
  git config --system user.name "John Doe"
  git config --system user.email john.doe@example.com
Maven 3.2.5 installed (Installation manual by Mkyong)
Java JDK installed

Setup

Go to your TeamCity server and perform the follwing steps

Create a new project from URL
- Enter the repository URL, the username and the password as demanded
Navigate to the settings of the newly crated project
Under VCS Roots you can edit the existing VCS root to define the branch to check out (in our case this would be the release branch)
Upload the maven settings.xml file which should be used for the release to the TeamCity server
Go to General Settings, choose the auto detected build configuration and click on edit (NOTE: In this sample there are two configurations because one of them was added manually in advance)
Navigate to the Version Control Settings and change the VCS checkout mode to Automatically on Agent
Go to the Build Steps menu, delete the existing build step and create two new build steps
- Build step for release:prepare
- Build step for release:perform
Last but not least the parameters referenced in the build configuration (release:prepare) have to be defined
- Go to Parameters menu and define the following parameters to be prompted
- env.development.version
- env.git.password
- env.git.username
- env.release.version
The parameters were specified as follows

Troubleshooting

Maven release:prepare hangs

Almost always the release:prepare goal of the maven release plugin hangs, the problem is that the GIT password is not set. In such a case the actual build has to be stopped and the password has to be set (i.e. according the manual above)

JRE instead of JDK

If the error message No compiler is provided in this environment. Perhaps you are running on a JRE rather than a JDK? occurs while the maven release plugin is preparing the release you have to install a java JDK on the build agents host system.

[ERROR] COMPILATION ERROR : 
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] No compiler is provided in this environment. Perhaps you are running on a JRE rather than a JDK?
[INFO] 1 error
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please tell me who you are

If the error message Please tell me who you are occurs on maven release:prepare the following commands have to be run on the build agents host system:

git config --system user.name "John Doe"
git config --system user.email john.doe@example.com

The TeamCity Free Open Source License was generously provided by JetBrains

Posted on 2015-06-19 14 By Marc Rufer Various Products Posted in Various Products Tagged #CI/CD, java, JetBrains, Maven, TeamCity

Marc Rufer

I'm a software engineer working at isolutions AG

14 Comments »

Vasilii Ruzov
2016-03-21 at 16:53 Reply

Hi Marc. Thank you for tutorial, but I have some questions regarding password storing. I followed your steps and did the same. After that I see that if I use simple git scm provider then in case of typo in password git prints my mistyped password to log. Even if there is a mistake it is still a critical security issue. Then I changed my scm provider to jgit and this solved the problem described. But I faced the 2nd problem. If you click on ‘view thread dump’ during build then you can find the whole command line for this build including password in __plain text__. It does not depend on scm provider and it’s just a teamcity bug which is not fixed in latest version. And 3rd problem I see: during and after the build there are /target/.git/config file which contains your username and password in plaintext. And this problem cannot be solved easily too.
Do you know how to workaround these issues?

sorry. typo in email. right one: ruzov.vo@gmail.com
- Marc Rufer
  2016-03-22 at 07:02 Reply
  
  Hi Vasili. Thank you for making me aware of these issues. I tried to reproduce the problems with one of our Java build jobs. Unfortunately I was not able to view the thread dump and there was no config file in /target/.git/. I don’t know if this file only gets generated if you’re using jgit. Concerning passwords in general I prefer using SSH keys over passwords for git as described in another blog post (https://d-fens.ch/2015/09/02/nobrainer-use-ssh-key-on-jetbrains-teamcity/) . I would recommend trying to use a SSH key and then check if you are still facing the issues mentioned in your comment. Please let me know if using SSH keys resolved the problems.
  - Vasilii Ruzov
    2016-03-22 at 09:51
    
    Thank you for quick response. The link you’ve provide describes how to set ssh key for vcs root. But do you still need to set username and password on release:prepare step? If yes, this won’t resolve my problem. My use-case is to let run the build only to people who have write permission to my repository. As release:prepare makes commit/push with version change and tag build will be terminated if person who triggered the build has insuffitient permissions.
    So I want my users to type their username/password or another credentials(maybe ssh-key or smth other) to run the build. Do you know how to do it?
  - Marc Rufer
    2016-03-22 at 10:24
    
    Hi Vasili. You’re right. I checked my build plan and I still have to provide a username and a password to run maven release:prepare. For that case I created environment variables under Parameters of the release configuration as follows:
    
    Name:
    env.git.password
    
    Spec:
    password description=’GitHub password used for maven release’ label=’GitHub Password’ display=’prompt’
    
    Name:
    env.git.username
    
    Spec:
    text description=’GitHub user name used for maven release’ validationMode=’any’ label=’GitHub user name’ display=’prompt’
    
    In the release:prepare step of the build configuration I defined the following “Additional Maven command line parameters”:
    
    -Dtag=activity.wrapper-%env.release.version%
    -DreleaseVersion=%env.release.version%
    -DdevelopmentVersion=%env.development.version%
    -SNAPSHOT -Dusername=%env.git.username%
    -Dpassword=%env.git.password%
    
    That allows you to enter username and password for every release. Additionally the user that starts the release build can define the release and the development version (Defined environment variables too). I don’t know, if the username and the password get logged in this case. I hope I could give you some further hints how this could probably work.
  - Vasilii Ruzov
    2016-03-22 at 11:54
    
    Hi Marc. I understand about -Dusername and -Dpassword. And this is actually what causes problem. These parameters are visible in plain text in process explorer(in command name on build agent. in unix I use `ps -ef` to see processes and commands), thread dump of running build(don’t know why you don’t see it because I can reproduce it without any problem. you just need to wait untill prepare step is being run and then expand current or parent process command line. all on teamcity web-ui). So I’m looking for some anoter _secure_ way to authorize the user who triggered the build in git to write version change commits on behalf of him or terminate the build in case of insuffitient permission.
  - Marc Rufer
    2016-03-22 at 12:10
    
    Hi Vasilii. Ok, I see. So if setting these paremeters in maven release:prepare step they still get logged. Sorry for the circumstances and that I couldn’t help you out. I don’t know how to avoid logging the credentials. As you already said this could be a bug in TeamCity. It would be glad if you could add a comment how you solved the problem as soon as you found a solution!
  - ruzovas
    2018-05-19 at 07:33
    
    Hi Marc, sorry for delay. But I’ve managed this problem. Take a look at:
    https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SCM-811
    https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/TW-42860
    
    I haven’t yet tested the proposed solution. I found a workaround and didn’t spend more time on that: define jgit as scm provider for maven-release-plugin. You still need to pass -Dusername=user and -Dpassword=pwd, but they won’t be visible in Teamcity log screen.
    
    However, this doesn’t solve the problem with `ps -ef` and these props are still visible there, but you build on your dedicated server most of time, so probably it’s not such a serious issue.
    
    To authorize the user who triggered the build I added 1 prompt parameter `password` and set -Dusername=%teamcity.build.user% -Dpassword=%env.prompt.password% (writing properties by memory, so some of them may have another spelling)
- Marc Rufer
  2018-05-23 at 07:22 Reply
  
  Hi Vasilii, thank you for posting your solution. I’m glad that you could solve part of the problem. As you build on your dedicated server most of time I also think it’s not such a serious issue.
Govind
2018-05-19 at 00:40 Reply

Hi Marc, It was nice article. I’m still not able to get it work with the same configuration. for some reason I’m getting following error on Teamcity 8.1.x

The git-push command failed.
Command output:
fatal: could not read Username for ‘https://github.foo.com’: No such device or address

I’m using VCS root auth auentication as indicated above and it worked fine with checkout but fails during mvn release prepare. It could not find username and pwd. Also did not work with mvn username and pwd arguments.

Do I need to also setup SSH key in addition to above ?
- Marc Rufer
  2018-05-23 at 07:02 Reply
  
  Hi Govind, do you have external build agents? If yes, you have to set Git username and email on the external build agents too.
  
  git config –system user.name “John Doe”
  git config –system user.email john.doe@example.com
  
  If your build agents or your TeamCity instance are not running under system account try to set Git username and email differently.
  
  git config –global user.name “John Doe”
  git config –global user.email john.doe@example.com
Marc
2019-11-05 at 18:27 Reply

Have you found a better solution in the meantime?
Otherwise, a second configuration has to be created for all of the build configurations.
Marc Rufer
2019-11-06 at 10:15 Reply

Unfortunately not. To be honest, we have not further investigated this issue.
vinay morkar
2020-03-28 at 17:15 Reply

Hi,
I have one question, how to trigger it only for specific branches? while other branches will just create snapshots and not the releases.
Marc Rufer
2020-04-03 at 08:39 Reply

Hi,
you can create a second build configuration for the snapshot case with different VCS root settings using branch specification input field.