Publish release candidates

[sbo2718]

Currently only final versions are published to https://central.sonatype.com/artifact/eu.europa.ted.eforms/eforms-sdk. Since we use the download mechanism in the eforms-core-java library to download the SDK it is difficult for us to actually test release candidates.
That's why I suggest to also publish release candidates.

[bertrand-lorentz]

Thanks for the suggestion.
Making the SDK release candidates more widely available might indeed be useful for wider testing.

But if we publish them to Maven Central like the final releases, I'm afraid they might be picked up and used as if they were final releases (in production). This might be by human mistake, or done automatically by an existing system.
I'd be interested to hear any ideas on how to reduce this risk. Or be convinced that I'm too cautious...

[FrederikSchlemmer]

Are there any updates here? I would also like to include this feature.

[sbo2718]

Thanks for the reply @bertrand-lorentz.

Looking at other libraries hosted on maven central, like the spring framework, they also publish release candidates but mark them in github as a pre-release version, like you did in https://github.com/OP-TED/eForms-SDK/releases/tag/2.0.0-alpha.1.
That way a developer can identify the version as a release or release candidate.

If your concern is the SdkDownloader in the core library, a parameter could be added if preview versions should be considered or not, e.g. SdkDownloader.enablePreviews(true). If set to false, all versions containing an RC should be ignored. For backward compability false should be the default value.