Guides

Fern | How to publish your Java SDK as an artifact to Maven Central

The following is a guide on how to publish your SDK (referred to as an artifact) to Maven Central.

Step 1: Decide what your Maven groupId will be .

We recommend using a reverse domain name, as it’s a common convention and it’s easy to remember.

For example:

  • stripe.com becomes com.stripe
  • aws.amazon.com becomes com.amazonaws
  • twilio.com becomes com.twilio.sdk (they added sdk to avoid a conflict with an existing groupId)
  • archive.org becomes org.archive
  • zookeeper.apache.org becomes org.apache.zookeeper

Alternatively, you can use your GitHub org name. For example, github.com/segmentio becomes io.segment.


Step 2: Create an account on Sonatype Jira. Create an account here.

Sonatype is a company that runs the Maven Central Repository, which is where we will be uploading our artifacts to.


Step 3: Create a new issue by hitting the Create button.

Create


Step 4: Fill out the form.

  • Select Community Support - Open Source Project Repository Hosting (OSSRH) for Project.

  • Select New Project for Issue Type.

Create Issue


Step 5: Prove ownership in the ticket.

Before granting you the groupId you requested, Sonatype will ask you to prove ownership of either the GitHub org or domain name that you based your groupId on.

In the case of a domain name, you will be asked to add a DNS TXT to your domain. Example ticket here.

In the case of GitHub org, you will be asked to create a repo and the bot will check that the repo has been created. Example ticket here.


Step 6: You’re ready to publish to your Maven repository!

  • Your Maven coordinate is <groupId>:<artifactId>
  • Your Maven username is the username of your Sonatype account.
  • Your Maven password is the password of your Sonatype account.

Step 7: Choose your artifact name.

Picking an artifactId is a personal preference. Here are examples for inspiration:

  • stripe-java [this is our recommended approach]
  • slack-api-client
  • twilio
  • aws-java-sdk-s3

Going forward, when referencing the artifact you’ll use the groupId and artifactId together. For example:

  • com.stripe:stripe-java
  • com.slack.api/slack-api-client
  • dev.merge:merge-java-client
  • com.amazonaws:aws-java-sdk-s3
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