What is a Repository Manager?
Download “Introduction to Repository Management” as a PDF
What is a Repository Manager?
- A proxy for remote repositories which caches artifacts saving both bandwidth and time required to retrieve a software artifact from a remote repository, and
- A host for internal artifacts providing an organization with a deployment target for software artifacts.
In addition to these two core features, a repository manager also allows you to manage binary software artifacts through the software development, quality assurance, and production release lifecycle. In addition to these core features, a repository manager can search software artifacts, audit development and release transactions, and integrate with external security systems such as LDAP. A repository manager is a powerful tool that encourages collaboration and provides visibility into the workflow which surrounds binary software artifacts.
What is an Artifact Repository?
Download “Introduction to Repository Management” as a PDF
Introduction
While many developers have adopted Maven as a build tool, most have yet to understand the importance of maintaining a repository manager both to proxy remote repositories and to manage and distribute software artifacts. This document defines repository and repository management, providing context for developers interested in learning how to use Sonatype’s Nexus to achieve a more efficient development cycle.
New Feature in Nexus 1.3: Mirror Support
There are many mirrors of the Central repository out there, but they are mostly under-utilized. I believe this occurs for two reasons:
- Users don’t know they exist – it’s not easy to find a good source for these URLs and locations.
- Users don’t have confidence in the mirrors – They don’t know how frequently they are updated, and don’t have an easy way to validate they are the same files that exist on Central.
In Nexus 1.3, we have introduced new functionality to solve both of those problems.
Interview with Brian Fox: Part 2 of 3: Saving Central
In this short, two-minute excerpt from my interview with Brian Fox, he describes the steps Sonatype took to mitigate the load and bandwidth problem which were affecting the Central Maven Repository late last year. While short, this audio contains some very useful information for anyone facing similar traffic problems. You’ll hear him talk about the switch from Apache httpd to nginx.
[media id=3 width=320 height=70]
Central Maven Repository Traffic: Using S3
Yesterday, in Central Maven Repository Traffic: Investigation and Analysis, I wrote about the analysis involved in tracking down the increasing load on Central. By identifiying some misbehaving tools, we were able to reduce the traffic from a 98 Mbps average down to 60-80 Mbps. In this post, I discuss the next step toward a Central Maven repository that can scale to meet the load generated by the millions of developers using an ecosystem of tools which rely on the Central Maven Repository. (more…)
