Minor Description
Currently we use feature branches. Our java project is about 40 modules. Each module is an ivy artifact. An artifact is either just a jar file OR a jar file and a tar file OR two jar files and a zip file.
We use ivy branches that map to our svn branches. This way one feature can keep the binary dependencies within the branch. I've set up a chain resolver that looks for artifacts in three repositories, a local snapshot repo, an integration repo, and a release candidate repo. When I use the latest.integration keyword I search all three repos and pull down the highest version artifact of all the artifacts are jar files with a default name pattern. In order to organize the snapshot and integration repo's I use a branch. However, a branch does not make sense in the context of a release or release candidate repo, these artifacts are ready for general consumption. If I have an artifact that has files that do not conform to the default naming convention OR are not jar files the chain resolver will not download them from the release candidate or release repos if a branch is specified. If a released a artifact is greater in version than the one on my branch I would like to get that one instead.
For released higher versioned artifacts I would like to be able to ignore the branch so they resolve by either setting a parameter OR having ivy know that branch isn't a deciding factor on how to resolve when I specify the ivy or artifact pattern for the ibiblo repo or url repo type without the branch variable.
Example:
<url name="chain2-releases" m2compatible="true" >
<ivy pattern="${nexus-releases}/[organisation]/[module]/[revision]/ivy-[revision].xml" />
<artifact pattern="${nexus-releases}/[organisation]/[module]/[revision]/[artifact]-[revision].[ext]" />
</url>
should resolve an artifact of higher version in:
<ivy:resolve>
<dependency org="my.org" name="MODULE1" rev="latest.integration" branch="${branch.name}" conf="default" />
<dependency org="my.org" name="MODULE2" rev="latest.integration" branch="${branch.name}" conf="default" />
</ivy:resolve>
<ivy:retrieve conf="default" pattern="${lib}/[artifact](-[classifier]).[ext]" />
EVEN IF branch.name is specified and the artifact in chain2-releases had no branch in the metadata.
Stated another way:
In a chain resolver given repositories that are branch and non branch aware, I would like ivy to resolve to the highest version number across all repos even if it is not in the branch.
If ivy handled this it would make our build/integration scripts much less complex.