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Working with the Gradle registry

You can configure Gradle to publish packages to the GitHub Packages Gradle registry and to use packages stored on GitHub Packages as dependencies in a Java project.

Who can use this feature?

GitHub Packages is available with GitHub Free, GitHub Pro, GitHub Free for organizations, GitHub Team, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, and GitHub Enterprise Server 3.0 or higher.


GitHub Packages is not available for private repositories owned by accounts using legacy per-repository plans. Also, accounts using legacy per-repository plans cannot access registries that support granular permissions, because these accounts are billed by repository. Enterprise Managed Users do not have individual storage allocation to publish packages within their account's namespace, but can publish to an organization's namespace. For additional information on Enterprise Managed Users, see "About Enterprise Managed Users." For the list of registries that support granular permissions, see "About permissions for GitHub Packages." For more information, see "GitHub’s plans."

Authenticating to GitHub Packages

GitHub Packages only supports authentication using a personal access token (classic). For more information, see "Managing your personal access tokens."

You need an access token to publish, install, and delete private, internal, and public packages.

You can use a personal access token (classic) to authenticate to GitHub Packages or the GitHub API. When you create a personal access token (classic), you can assign the token different scopes depending on your needs. For more information about packages-related scopes for a personal access token (classic), see "About permissions for GitHub Packages."

To authenticate to a GitHub Packages registry within a GitHub Actions workflow, you can use:

  • GITHUB_TOKEN to publish packages associated with the workflow repository.
  • a personal access token (classic) with at least read:packages scope to install packages associated with other private repositories (which GITHUB_TOKEN can't access).

For more information about GITHUB_TOKEN used in GitHub Actions workflows, see "Automatic token authentication." For more information about using GITHUB_TOKEN with Gradle, see "Publishing Java packages with Gradle."

Authenticating with a personal access token

You must use a personal access token (classic) with the appropriate scopes to publish and install packages in GitHub Packages. For more information, see "Introduction to GitHub Packages."

You can authenticate to GitHub Packages with Gradle using either Gradle Groovy or Kotlin DSL by editing your build.gradle file (Gradle Groovy) or build.gradle.kts file (Kotlin DSL) file to include your personal access token (classic). You can also configure Gradle Groovy and Kotlin DSL to recognize a single package or multiple packages in a repository.

Replace USERNAME with your GitHub username, TOKEN with your personal access token (classic), REPOSITORY with the name of the repository containing the package you want to publish, and OWNER with the name of the personal account or organization on GitHub that owns the repository. Because uppercase letters aren't supported, you must use lowercase letters for the repository owner even if the GitHub user or organization name contains uppercase letters.

Note: GitHub Packages supports SNAPSHOT versions of Apache Maven. To use the GitHub Packages repository for downloading SNAPSHOT artifacts, enable SNAPSHOTS in the POM of the consuming project or your ~/.m2/settings.xml file. For an example, see "Working with the Apache Maven registry."

Example using Gradle Groovy for a single package in a repository

plugins {
    id("maven-publish")
}
publishing {
    repositories {
        maven {
            name = "GitHubPackages"
            url = uri("https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY")
            credentials {
                username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
                password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
            }
        }
    }
    publications {
        gpr(MavenPublication) {
            from(components.java)
        }
    }
}

Example using Gradle Groovy for multiple packages in the same repository

plugins {
    id("maven-publish") apply false
}
subprojects {
    apply plugin: "maven-publish"
    publishing {
        repositories {
            maven {
                name = "GitHubPackages"
                url = uri("https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY")
                credentials {
                    username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
                    password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
                }
            }
        }
        publications {
            gpr(MavenPublication) {
                from(components.java)
            }
        }
    }
}

Example using Kotlin DSL for a single package in the same repository

plugins {
    `maven-publish`
}
publishing {
    repositories {
        maven {
            name = "GitHubPackages"
            url = uri("https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY")
            credentials {
                username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") as String? ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
                password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") as String? ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
            }
        }
    }
    publications {
        register<MavenPublication>("gpr") {
            from(components["java"])
        }
    }
}

Example using Kotlin DSL for multiple packages in the same repository

plugins {
    `maven-publish` apply false
}
subprojects {
    apply(plugin = "maven-publish")
    configure<PublishingExtension> {
        repositories {
            maven {
                name = "GitHubPackages"
                url = uri("https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY")
                credentials {
                    username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") as String? ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
                    password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") as String? ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
                }
            }
        }
        publications {
            register<MavenPublication>("gpr") {
                from(components["java"])
            }
        }
    }
}

Publishing a package

By default, GitHub publishes the package to an existing repository with the same name as the package. For example, GitHub will publish a package named com.example.test in the OWNER/test GitHub Packages repository.

After you publish a package, you can view the package on GitHub. For more information, see "Viewing packages."

  1. Authenticate to GitHub Packages. For more information, see "Authenticating to GitHub Packages."

  2. After creating your package, you can publish the package.

     gradle publish
    

Using a published package

To use a published package from GitHub Packages, add the package as a dependency and add the repository to your project. For more information, see "Declaring dependencies" in the Gradle documentation.

  1. Authenticate to GitHub Packages. For more information, see "Authenticating to GitHub Packages."

  2. Add the package dependencies to your build.gradle file (Gradle Groovy) or build.gradle.kts file (Kotlin DSL) file.

    Example using Gradle Groovy:

    dependencies {
        implementation 'com.example:package'
    }
    

    Example using Kotlin DSL:

    dependencies {
        implementation("com.example:package")
    }
    
  3. Add the repository to your build.gradle file (Gradle Groovy) or build.gradle.kts file (Kotlin DSL) file.

    Example using Gradle Groovy:

    repositories {
        maven {
            url = uri("https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY")
            credentials {
                username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
                password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
            }
       }
    }
    

    Example using Kotlin DSL:

    repositories {
        maven {
            url = uri("https://maven.pkg.github.com/OWNER/REPOSITORY")
            credentials {
                username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") as String? ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
                password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") as String? ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
            }
        }
    }
    

Further reading