Is there a procedure for doing beta releases?

[sst...@redhat.com]

Is there a procedure for doing beta releases of components?

[Ondro Mihályi]

Eclipse formalizes pre-final (beta) releases into milestones and release candidates. Milestones are probably closer to what you meant by beta releases.

In Config, we only did release candidates because all was almost finished when we started releasing artifacts. You may look into MP Config release guide and copy/enhance the procedure. In short, we always created a tag with a proper version using the maven release plugin, and then deployed the artifact into Eclipse repository using a Jenkins job.

Eclipse repository instantly makes a deployed artifact available, so there's no support for reviewing artifacts before published. We didn't need that for RC releases. If you want to add a review period before the artifacts are released, you may deploy to maven central, which supports a concept of staging repository automatically, forcing a review process before artifacts are published. 

Even if you don't need the review process available in Maven Central, it's a good idea to try deploying artifacts there and then discard the staging repo if you don't want to publish artifacts in Central. It's because Central enforces a few more validations (mostly project metadata, sources and javadoc artifacts and signing all files with GPG key files) and it's better to know what needs to be done to pass them in advance. It's necessary to deploy to Central from a local computer with private GPG keys and an account that has permissions to the microprofile namespace.

--Ondro