Distributing Contracts

Distributing your Smithy model lets other projects consume the contract without copying model files. NSmithy supports two packaging paths:

• Maven JAR — any Smithy-based toolchain (Java, TypeScript, Python, .NET, and others) can consume it from a Maven registry. This is the more portable option.
• NuGet package — .NET consumers reference it like any other package; NSmithy picks up the model files and synthesizes a smithy-build.json automatically.

Maven JAR Distribution

Recommended

Maven JAR distribution is generally preferred. It works with Smithy tooling outside .NET, so Java, TypeScript, Python, and other consumers can use the same model package.

Configure

Add SmithyMavenGroupId and SmithyMavenArtifactId to the contracts project:

<PropertyGroup>
  <SmithyPublish>true</SmithyPublish>
  <SmithyMavenGroupId>io.github.acme</SmithyMavenGroupId>
  <SmithyMavenArtifactId>my-service-contracts</SmithyMavenArtifactId>
</PropertyGroup>

Version (or VersionPrefix/VersionSuffix) is reused as the Maven version.

Pack

dotnet pack MyService.Contracts --configuration Release

When SmithyMavenGroupId is set, the _CreateSmithyJar MSBuild target runs after Pack and writes Maven artifacts alongside the .nupkg:

bin/Release/
  MyService.Contracts.1.0.0.nupkg
  my-service-contracts-1.0.0.jar
  my-service-contracts-1.0.0.jar.md5
  my-service-contracts-1.0.0.jar.sha1
  my-service-contracts-1.0.0.pom
  my-service-contracts-1.0.0.pom.md5
  my-service-contracts-1.0.0.pom.sha1

The JAR follows Smithy’s model-discovery layout:

META-INF/smithy/
  manifest        ← newline-delimited list of model file paths
  hello.smithy    ← model file(s) from model/

Install Locally

To make the JAR available to local Smithy CLI builds during development:

mvn install:install-file \
  -Dfile=bin/Release/my-service-contracts-1.0.0.jar \
  -DpomFile=bin/Release/my-service-contracts-1.0.0.pom \
  -Dpackaging=jar

Publish to a Remote Registry

Use the dotnet-nsmithy push tool to upload to a Maven registry that accepts HTTP PUT, such as GitHub Packages, Artifactory, or Nexus:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-nsmithy

dotnet nsmithy push bin/Release \
  --registry https://maven.pkg.github.com/ORG/REPO \
  --username $GITHUB_ACTOR \
  --token    $GITHUB_TOKEN

push reads the Maven coordinates and version from the .csproj automatically. Credentials can also be supplied via MAVEN_USERNAME / MAVEN_TOKEN environment variables.

Note

Maven JAR distribution does not require a dedicated contracts project. You can add SmithyMavenGroupId, SmithyMavenArtifactId, and SmithyPublish=true directly to a server project that owns model files, and dotnet pack will produce the JAR. A separate contracts project is still recommended because it keeps the model decoupled from any one implementation and easier to share across server and client projects.

NuGet Distribution

Pack

dotnet pack MyService.Contracts --configuration Release

NSmithy.MSBuild embeds the model and dependency metadata into the package:

Package path	Contents
build/smithy/**/*.smithy	model files
build/smithy-maven-deps.txt	one Maven coordinate per line
build/NSmithy.MSBuild.props	sets SmithySources for consumers
buildTransitive/NSmithy.MSBuild.targets	MSBuild targets imported transitively

Consume

A project that references the published package picks up the model and Maven dependencies automatically:

<PropertyGroup>
  <SmithyService>example.hello#HelloService</SmithyService>
</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup>
  <PackageReference Include="NSmithy.Server.AspNetCore" Version="0.6.0" />
  <PackageReference Include="MyService.Contracts" Version="1.0.0" />
</ItemGroup>

NSmithy synthesizes a smithy-build.json under obj/, invokes smithy build, and adds the generated .g.cs files to compilation — identical behavior to a ProjectReference.