The Legacy OSSRH oss.sonatype.org is going to go away 30th June 2025, which means it will not be possible to release your libraries using the Legacy OSSRH API. Users are advised to migrate to Maven Central. The documentation suggests JReleaser to release to Maven Central, but JReleaser is a bloated nightmare. Read more on a good alternative.

To summarize the madness, there are three endpoints when releasing to Maven Central:

1. The Legacy OSSRH oss.sonatype.org which is going to go away.
2. The new Maven Central Publisher portal (Gradle docs). It uses a new REST API incompatible with the Legacy OSSRH API. You need JReleaser to release via this API.
3. The OSSRH Staging API which is the same REST API as the Legacy OSSRH, but the artifacts are published to the Maven Central Publisher (not to the Legacy OSSRH oss.sonatype.org). This one is NOT scheduled to be deprecated (yet).

I tried to use JReleaser and failed (too complex). Then I realized I can use existing Gradle plugins to release using the OSSRH REST API protocol, but via the OSSRH Staging API (the third option). In order to do that, you need:

1. Migrate your namespaces to Maven Central
2. Generate User Token at your Maven Central Publisher Account: you need this token to publish to the OSSRH Staging API.
3. Update your Gradle plugin to release to https://ossrh-staging-api.central.sonatype.com/service/local/

I’m using the Gradle Nexus Publish Plugin which not only is capable of uploading your released library to a staging repository, but also close and release the repository as well, allowing you to upload your library to Maven Central purely via Gradle command line.

To achieve that:

1. See konsume-xml build.gradle.kts for an example.
   • See karibu-testing for a multi-project example.
2. After the plugin is fully configured, simply run ./gradlew clean build publish closeAndReleaseStagingRepositories to release to Maven Central.
3. While the command is running, you can follow the progress at Maven Central Publisher

When publishing the first time, you can run the closeStagingRepositories instead. This way, the repository is uploaded and closed, but won’t be released just yet. This way, you can inspect the contents in the Maven Central Publisher; when you’re happy with the outcome, just hit the “Publish” button.