Maven Release Plugin: Permission denied (publickey) Github

Question

I am trying to deploy my Maven project which is hosted on Github. I have generated and added my public key to Github, and also I think I have filled the pom.xml with all the required properties:

<licenses>
    <license>
        <name>MIT License</name>
        <url>http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php</url>
    </license>
</licenses>

<developers>
    <developer>
        <name>Hristo Vrigazov</name>
        <email>[email protected]</email>
        <organization>Hribol</organization>
        <organizationUrl>https://github.com/hristo-vrigazov</organizationUrl>
    </developer>
</developers>

<scm>
    <connection>scm:git:git://github.com/hristo-vrigazov/bromium.git</connection>
    <developerConnection>scm:git:git://github.com/hristo-vrigazov/bromium.git</developerConnection>
    <url>https://github.com/hristo-vrigazov/bromium</url>
    <tag>com.hribol.bromium.dsl.parent-1.0.0</tag>
</scm>

I am trying to release as follows:

ssh-add ~/.ssh/github_rsa
ssh-add -l
mvn release:prepare release:perform -B -e | tee maven-central-deploy.log

However, I keep getting this message from Maven, indicating that there is a problem with my SSH key:

Provider message:
The git-push command failed.
Command output:
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.


at org.apache.maven.plugins.release.PrepareReleaseMojo.prepareRelease(PrepareReleaseMojo.java:299)
at org.apache.maven.plugins.release.PrepareReleaseMojo.execute(PrepareReleaseMojo.java:247)
at org.apache.maven.plugin.DefaultBuildPluginManager.executeMojo(DefaultBuildPluginManager.java:134)
at org.apache.maven.lifecycle.internal.MojoExecutor.execute(MojoExecutor.java:208)
... 20 more
Caused by: 
org.apache.maven.shared.release.scm.ReleaseScmCommandException: Unable to tag SCM
Provider message:
The git-push command failed.
Command output:
Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.

What could be the reason? I was able to deploy the snapshots to Nexus.

Answer 1

You are using the wrong protocol (the "git" one) in your URL:

<connection>scm:git:git://github.com/hristo-vrigazov/bromium.git</connection>

It should be using ssh:

<connection>scm:git:ssh://[email protected]/hristo-vrigazov/bromium.git</connection>

or

<connection>scm:git:[email protected]:hristo-vrigazov/bromium.git</connection>

(same for developerConnection)
Only then, your ssh key would be used.