Meet the Nexus Remote Repository Browsing Plugin
Having used Nexus since it was a beta release and having also written a Plexus component-style Nexus plugin (the nexus-ldap realm), I was curious about the new Nexus Plugin API introduced in Nexus 1.4.0. To try it out, I asked two of our developers here at Devoteam Sweden to develop the Nexus Remote Repository Browsing Plugin – a Nexus plugin that makes it possible to directly browse the remote Maven repository of a proxy repository within the Nexus UI. The plugin has been contributed to Nexus OSS and will be released as a part of the upcoming 1.5.0 release. In this blog post, I will talk a little bit about the plugin and its use case. (more…)
From Plexus to Guice (#2): The Guice/Plexus Bridge and Custom Bean Injection
In the next few articles of the “Plexus to Guice” series I will look at the modular design of our replacement Plexus container and show how you can configure a POB (Plain Old Bean) from Guice with a simple code example. In the first article of this series, Jason discussed the need to move to a more widely used and support container, and the reasons why we chose to standardize on Guice. As we migrate more Plexus-based applications (such as Maven) to Guice, we still to maintain backward-compatibility for all of the plugins and extensions which were developed using Plexus. In this post, I start to discuss the scope and initial efforts to create something we’re calling the Guice/Plexus “shim”. It is a library, a “container” that was developed to allow existing Plexus components to use Guice under the hood without any modification. (more…)
From Plexus to Guice (#1): Why Guice?
When we started the Maven project, dependency injection was still developing. Spring was just starting out and the Avalon project at Apache was really the only IoC framework around. While the concept seems second-nature by 2010, in 2002, it wasn’t a primary focus of the initial efforts of the Maven community but it was something I felt had to be in place for the development of Maven 2. We knew we needed some sort of component framework, some standard mechanism to instantiate plugins and configure them based on a set of configuration points, and, at the time, Plexus filled the gap. Plexus was exactly what we needed because it evolved with the requirements of Maven, and I think that Plexus served us well for the past few years but it’s time to let go. I never felt compelled to switch until Guice 2.0. Guice has the capabilities and adaptability we require in Maven.
For all new development, we’ve decided to focus on Guice and build a compatibility layer for existing components. In this post, I’m going to discuss the various factors that went into the decision to move to Guice. All of Sonatype’s product are currently developed using Guice and the Guice/Plexus integration libraries that Stuart will describe in the articles that will follow over the next few weeks, and future work on Maven 3 will be based on Guice. (more…)
Maven over Ant + Ivy: A Team Perspective by Les Hazlewood
Les Hazlewood has an objective summary of why he eventually came around to deciding that Maven is a better overall solution then Ant + Ivy. This is an evolution in thought process that we, Sonatype, often see in enterprises and Les has two blog entries that illustrate this evolution perfectly.
Maven 2 vs Ant+Ivy: Our selection process: This entry gives Les’ original perspective on Maven and the process by which he originally decided to choose Ant + Ivy.
Maven 2 vs Ant+Ivy: Revisited: This entry gives Les’ new perspective and why his enterprise team, and the Apache Shiro project, have chosen Maven.
I now firmly believe that Maven 2 is a better build and project management tool than Ant+Ivy. I was wrong.
Yep, I said it. I’m man enough to admit when I’ve made mistakes and that I’ve learned from my experiences. And this is coming from the guy that wrote a (still popular) OnJava article for Ant in the enterprise.
Overall, life with Maven is good. I’m glad that I was able to swallow my pride, really give it a chance, and in turn reap the benefits. I haven’t used Ant in over a year since switching, nor have I ever felt the need to go back.
We hope this perspective helps potential enterprises save time when looking for a build and release infrastructure.
Selecting OSS Software: 10 Questions Answered for Sonatype Nexus
Last month there was an article on TechRepublic entitled “10 questions to ask when selecting open source products for your enterprise”. As both a consumer and producer of open source enteprise software, I thought that this list of questions captures the areas that people should be thinking about when they are selecting a technology. Open source technology selection is about much more than just feature comparison. When you are selecting an open source technology, you have to think about licensing issues, the scope of the supporting community, and open source governance models. Since we’ve been talking a lot about Nexus, I wanted to summarize our efforts by answering these questions for potential users. If you’re trying to decide what repository manager to use in your organization I hope that the answers to these questions help you make an informed decision. (more…)
