JAX asked me some questions about Aether so I’m providing the the English version of the answers here for the community. The German version should show up on the JAX site shortly.

Can you give us an introduction to Aether?

Aether is a library for interacting with artifact repositories. This involves the specification of local repository formats, remote repository formats, workspaces, transports, and artifact resolution. People are generally familiar with repositories whether they be local or remote. Workspaces are additional sources where artifacts can be resolved from. Workspaces can be used in IDEs to provide resolution of projects you are working on, in shells like the Maven Shell or Roo, or any other long-lived process where a developer needs to resolve against in-development projects. I think people are familiar with various transports but HTTP is by far the dominant transport used with artifact repositories, but Aether lets you define additional ones if you need to. Along with all the rules to resolve artifacts taking into consideration any transformations, relocations, and conflict resolution strategies you might need to employ. We also plan to allow Aether to define version schemes, but the first work was just started on this by Alin Dreghiciu.

It is very important to note that Aether has no dependencies on Maven. When I said Aether is a library for interacting with artifact repositories, I didn’t mean Maven artifact repositories. Aether is a general purpose library for interacting with artifact repositories. If you wanted to specify your dependency metadata in a properties files Aether will let you do that. If you want to store your artifacts in a database Aether will let you do that. But, of course, we needed Aether to work for Maven so we created an implementation of what we call an ArtifactDescriptorReader to process Maven POMs. That implementation lives in the Maven codebase and that’s how we make Aether work for Maven.

Read more…

Aether, Community, Maven Aether, JAX, Maven

Craig Tataryn of BasementCoders.com interviewed Brian Fox about the upcoming release of Maven 3. From Basementcoders.com:

“With the Maven 3 betas being out and packing a tonne of cool features we decided that we needed to sit down and talk with someone in the know. Enter Brian Fox, PMC Chair Apache Maven and VP of Engineering at Sonatype (the fellows who make Maven Repositories manageable via their Nexus product).”

This interview touches upon Brian’s background in build management and developer infrastructure, and how Brian started to use Maven and became involved in the Apache Maven project. You will also hear Brian discuss the history of Maven, the motivations behind the project, some comparisons between Maven and Ant, and new features planned for the Maven 3 release.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Community, Maven Apache Maven, Brian Fox, Maven 3

April 7, 2010 Sonatype is hosting a Maven Meetup in downtown Philadelphia ahead of Emerging Technology for the Enterprise.  Take part in presentations given by the developers who are building the Maven software you will be using in the future.  Registration is filling up fast, there are only a few seats left.  Learn about Apache Maven, Hudson, Nexus, Sonar, Felix, OSGi, Tycho, Selenium, and more.  Visit www.sonatype.com/meetup2010 for more information about presentations and registration.

Maven Meetup April 7, 2010 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM Sheraton Society Hill (downtown) Philadephia, PA

Choose from a range of sessions presented by the Maven developers.  Sessions will include:

• Maven in the Enterprise
• Git, JGit & EGit
• OSGi Runtimes
• OSGi Provisioning with P2
• Nexus
• Moving from Plexus to Guice
• Hudson
• Tycho: Enterprise OSGI Builds
• m2eclipse
• Selenium
• Peaberry
• Nexus & OSGi

Read more…

Community, Maven hudson, Maven, Nexus, OSGi, Philadelphia, Selenium, Sonatype, Tycho

Sonatype is a gold sponsor at EclipseCon so we have a room for the day to some extra presentations and demos. If you’re at EclipseCon and you’re interested in Maven, M2Eclipse, Nexus, or Tycho then please come to the Camino room on the second floor!

10:00am: Developing with Maven 3.0 and M2Eclipse 1.0

A discussion of the changes that have been made in Maven 3.0 to better support interoperation with Eclipse, the roadmap toward the 1.0 release, and an overview of the current features. We will also be talking about Maven Studio for Eclipse, Sonatype’s new Maven-focused Eclipse IDE.

11:00am: Managing p2 Repositories and Repository Interoperability with Nexus Professional

A discussion of how Sonatype is trying to simplify the management of P2 repositories with Nexus.

1:00pm: Tycho Workshop & Demo Extravaganza!

Anyone who is interested in an alternative to PDEBuild, Buckminster, or Athena. Tycho is a set of Maven 3.0 plugins which make up the next generation headless build solution for Eclipse-based products and OSGi bundles. This will hands on workshop where we will provide demonstrations and help you convert your build to Tycho!

See you there!

Community, Maven, Nexus, m2eclipse

This April in Philadelphia there are some exciting events taking place in the open source and enterprise technology communities.  On April 7, 2010 Sonatype will be hosting the Apache Maven Meetup.   The meetup will focus on development infrastructure technologies, offering talks and workshops led by core contributors and package maintainers.

Sessions in two tracks will cover tools such as the Apache Maven build and release manager, Hudson continuous integration engine, Nexus repository manager, Sonar quality server and other technologies widely used by software developers around the world.  Register for the Sonatype Maven Meetup at www.sonatype.com/meetup2010.

April 8-9, 2010 is the 5th Annual Emerging Technologies for the Enterprise conference.

Be a part of the premier event for developers, architects, and IT executives. Subjects as expansive and intricate as emerging technology and Open Source require a dynamic forum. This conference provides just that, with industry experts providing up-to-the-minute insight.  ETE 2010 brings together pioneers across the spectrum to discuss the principles, practices, and products that are transforming IT’s ability to drive the success of the enterprise.

Both events are taking place at the Society Hill Sheraton in Philadelphia.  Register today!

Community, Maven, Sonatype Emerging Technologies, Enterprse, Maven, Sonatype