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Release History
Release History in SourceForge, Release History in Bintray
First released in mid 2006, Artifactory was the first repository manager to offer indexed searches, security controls and web 2.0 UI. Artifactory's development is user-needs driven, and is primarily focused on enterprise features.
Release history
Nexus descended from Proximity, which was the first MRM available. It was updated architecturally to be lighter and faster using the lessons learned from Proximity. Nexus also has the most active release cycle with Major releases every 6 weeks and minor releases much more frequently.
License History
All versions: Apache License 2.0
Lesser GNU General Public License 3.0
(early versions released under Apache License 2.0)
Eclipse Public License Version 1.0
(earlier versions released under Affero GNU Public License v3 and GNU General Public License 3.0)
Public Instances
Deployment
Standalone
Embedded Jetty. JSW launch scripts - runs as a service on windows and unix
Tomcat 7 - runs as a service on Windows and Unix. Complete script for installation as a service on unix, includes: user creation, permission settings and service config.
Embedded Jetty. JSW launch scripts - runs as a service on windows and unix. Also Native Solaris Service Manager Scripts.
War
"Drop the War" - deploy into any servlet container with zero configuration.
no container configuration required to run the war.
Performance
Memory Size out of the box
128mb
128mb
28mb
Configuration
UI configurable
Partially
Fully configurable via Ajax UI with extensive online help, or REST API
100% configuration with Ajax UI or REST API
Config Storage
XML
XML
XML
Extensibility/
Orthogonality
IOC
Spring
Spring
Google Guice
REST API
Partially (with 1.4-M1)
Extensive coverage. Document-first design (not UI coupled, so changes in UI do not break existing REST clients). Uses Jersey. Can be used via strongly-typed Java API. Can be called directly or using the artadmin CLI.
Supports WADL.
Uses Restlet.org servlet. UI communicates with server via REST to ensure 100% api support
Deploy plug-ins without recompilation
Extensible with custom Groovy plugins - schedule tasks, deploy artifacts, change resolution rules and download content, tend to any storage events etc.
Plugin source files are redeployed on the fly during development and can be edited and debugged in your favorite IDE.
Fully extensible across the core components, REST API and UI. See the book and this post for more info.
Proxying and Cache
Hosted Repositories
Proxy Repositories
Aggregate Repositories into single logical repo
Nest and reuse Repository Groups
Groups can contain other groups
Inclusion/exclusion rules per remote proxy
Nexus provides two ways to implement this:
- You can define arbitrary regular expressions that can then either explicitly limit a request to a specific repository or explicity exclude a repository from a request. This approach can be used to define arbitary rules to specific proxy repositories.
- Nexus Pro has a procurement feature which gives you the ability to define specific inclusion or exclusion rules using patterns or specific GAV coordinates.
Checksum checking
fix bad checksums
block bad checksums
ignore bad checksums
repair hosted checksums
calculate missing checksums
validate client-side checksums on deploy
(Feature not implemented for a good reason. This is a worst-practice, checksums and PGP signatures should be generated by your build. )
Maven Metadata.xml repair
Not needed: Maven metadata.xml is always correct for locally stored artifacts, and always in sync with all repository operations.
Auto-cleanup of repositories declared in POMs
Can remove problematic external repository declarations in POMs exposed via virtual repositories: repos used in active profiles, any repos or no cleanup.
Only repo section is removed and the original POM is always stored intact in the underlying cache.
Nexus does not manipulate poms that it proxies. This breaks the web of trust by invalidating pgp signatures to downstream users. Nexus maintains signatures and license headers.
On the fly conversion of M1 to M2
with custom mappings for ambiguous paths
On the fly conversion of M2 to M1
Eager parallel download of related artifacts
Can download jars in parallel as soon as poms are requested, and sources in parallel when jars are requested.
Shared Remote Repository Definitions
Share remote repository definitions and import preconfigured definitions for most common remote repositories, save the configuration hassle.
Eclipse Update Site Proxying
Pro
Eclipse OSGI / P2 Proxying
Pro
OBR (OSGI Bundle Repository)
Maven Site Hosting
- Pro
Built in Remote Repository Browsing (html)
In the nexus-rrb-plugin included in the core bundle
Built in Remote Repository Browsing (s3)
Indexing/
Search
Index Format
Lucene
Lucene
Lucene
Known Consumers and Producers of this format
M2Eclipse
IAM (via web services)
M2Eclipse
Supports M2Eclipse indexes, but does not consume them. Artifactory manages its own database-based indexes.
M2EclipsePlugin consumes
Nexus Indexer CLI tool produces
Identify unknown artifact via checksum
On the fly indexing
Immediate and transactional
Scheduled Indexing
Not needed - indexes are always up-to-date
(Not needed in most cases, but manual reindex is available in case changes are made directly to storage external to the app)
Search in selected repositories
Indexes any file in any format
Relies on maven-indexer which only indexes artifacts in Maven format
Search for artifacts on Central index
(1.4-M1)
Index Publishing for External Consumption
Only version compliant with all IDEs
Group Index Publishing
(1.4-M2)
Download Index from Remote Repositories for Local searching and proxying to consumers.
(1.4-M1)
Known Indexes publishing compatible Index: Centrallice, Java.Net, more here
Incremental Index Downloads
(1.4-M1)
Remote repositories only.
Incremental Index Publishing
(1.4-M1)
Remote repositories only.
Class search
Includes search for any jar resource, and showing the actual class found.
GAVC search
POM/XML search
Includes XPath search of any XML metadata.
No need to customize anything for XML indexing.
Ivy modules search
Properties search
Search custom properties. Attach props to both files and folders via the UI (Pro) or via REST (OSS). No need for custom RDF uploads. Search results are can be manipulated as a bundle.
Custom metadata may be attached via the UI, Rest or by uploading an RDF file as part of your build. The metadata is indexed and searchable. (Pro)
(1.4-M2)Navigate to artifacts tree browser from search result
Reports
Report for Problem Artifacts
By default blocks bad poms in runtime instead of polluting your repository and reporting after the fact (policy is configurable via UI)
RSS Feeds and UI viewer for bad checksums and artifacts with bad poms.
Bad poms are allowed through by default because many times Maven can still use them. We don't believe that simply inserting a repo manager should cause things to suddenly fail from Central. The repo man should for the most part be transparent by default.
Repository Statistics
Per repository or as a comparison among multiple repositories
Number of stored artifacts. More stats coming.
Artifact Statistics
Download count.
Last downloaded and by whom.
Deployed by.
Age.
Last Modified.
Deployed by.
Age.
RSS Feeds for New Artifacts
RSS feeds available both for new artifacts in the repository and for newly deployed/discovered versions of a specific artifact
In development.
Feeds for:
Newly Proxied Artifacts
Newly Deployed Artifacts
System Configuration Changes
Checksum errors
Authentication Events
Artifact Watching
Supports watching any repository path for add/remove/update and receiving email notifications (Pro).
Audit Logs
currently viewable from text file only
Detailed audit logs for all actions and their sources in access.log
User Interface
UI Technology
JSP
Ajax - uses Apache Wicket
ExtJs - Ajax
Repository Browsing
html and webdav
Ajax tree view, simple HTML view and webdav
Ext Tree View, html, REST:xml, REST:json
Viewing of Artifact Information
POM information, dependencies, dependency tree and used by; artifact (including pom, sources, javadocs, etc.) can also be downloaded from artifact info page
POM view, size, deployed by, age, last downloaded and by whom, times downloaded, dependency info, permissions, metadata and properties, virtual repositories association, actions, builds + build information.
Delete Artifacts
Move Artifacts
(via REST Api only)
Move artifacts between repositories + dry-run to check for warnings + auto metadata recalculation. Also available via REST in Pro.
Moving artifacts is avoided by using the staging support in Pro.
Copy Artifacts
(1.4-M1) via REST api only.
Cheap-copy of artifacts between repositories + dry-run to check for warnings + auto metadata recalculation (no extra space used due to pointer-based storage).
Copying is often the best approach for exposing the same artifact under different secure locations. Also available via REST in Pro.
We don't recommend artifact duplication.
Upload Artifacts
With our without pom (will generate one if needed)
With our without pom (will generate one if needed).
Upload multiple artifacts in one go.
Edit the pom before deployment.
Deploy to arbitrary (non-maven) paths via the UI.
With our without pom (will generate one if needed)
Upload multiple artifacts (classifiers) at once.
Syntax Highlighting
Syntax highlighting + copy to clipboard support for dozens of known file types directly from the repository (including zip/jar sources).
Jar Browsing
Supports viewing the content of jar files, including show source for class files.
Via a plugin in Pro.
Dynamic Resources
Serve dynamic repository content based on textual filtering (Pro)
Mount Repositories as WebDAV Shares
repositories are available thru dav.
Secure artifact browsing, moving and copying in WebDAV mounts using the native file explorer. which updates indexing and metadata automatically
Task Scheduler
Reindex, Rebuild Attributes, Publish Group Index, Snapshot Cleanup, Stale Artifact Purge, Rebuild/Correct Maven Metadata
Configure deployed plug-ins
proxy policies, artifact processors
Extension points to UI, request processing, scheduling, storage events etc.
Plugins can contribute REST, UI and components.
UI Branding
Upload or link your logo image + preview, add custom footer text.
Branding with Logo is available (Pro).
Repository Support
Maven 2
Maven 1
Only with Maven layout
Maven and non-maven layouts
Only with Maven layout
Only with Maven layout
Maven and non-maven layouts
Only with Maven layout
(Pro) (Pro) (Pro) (Pro)Reuses native remote repositories for effective caching and expiry management
(Pro)Uses a separate mirroring mechanism where underlying list of repositories isn't under user control
Custom Layouts
Supports any custom layout with the ability to "understand" per layout what is a module. Defaults layouts can be extended in Pro.
Repository Storage
File System
Database (configurable) or file system + full system import/export and automated backups.
File System - Uses M2 layout on disk meaning no import or export required to get access to your artifacts.
Repository Replication/Syncing
Supports repository or folder-level replication via rsync-like REST API, including support for syncing deletes and controlling overwrites. Supports scheduled or event-driven push mode and pull mode (in Pro).
Store same binary only once
Artifacts with the same hash are stored a single time, no matter in how many repositories it appears in.
we don't recommend copying artifacts, so in practice this doesn't matter.
Artifact Deployment
- uses http or dav
- UI support for deploying artifacts + full HTTP REST (GET/PUT/HEAD, DELETE etc.)
- uses http put /get via full REST api (also supports HEAD / DELETE etc)
Supports WebDAV
Also includes WebDAV support and mounting a repository as a WebDAV folder.
Which is intentional because Maven doesn't actually need the full WebDav protocol. Since Nexus handles the data on disk, the http PUT is all that is needed. The standard lightweight http wagon can be used for deployment. Most of the Java implementations for the server side are non-compliant. Nexus goes for simplicity and performance.
No Wagon Extension Required (works with lightweight-http)
Deploy Artifacts via UI
Includes snapshots and ability to auto-generate POMs and tweak POMs in the UI before deployment.
can auto-generate poms.Accepts multiple files in one operation to accept classified/attached artifacts.
Manual deploying of SNAPSHOTs is not allowed as this is bad practice . 3rd party SNAPSHOTS should get converted to an internal release version so you can reliably use them in your builds.
Deploy Artifact Bundles (multiple artifacts in one go)
in future plans
Import local repositories
Import repositories and separate RELASE and SNAPSHOT artifacts
Releases and Snapshots should be kept in separate repositories. The import tools can separate these artifacts for you into discrete repositories.
Centrally controlled snapshot policy
Can choose between unique, non-unique (to save space and artifacts clutter) or respect deployer's settings.
Respect deployer's settings (from the pom)
Nexus doesn't mess with your files. What you deploy is what you store.(see next entry)
API to retrieve latest SNAPSHOT based on coordinates
This API is available regardless of the deployer settings. This means it's still able to maintain timestamped snapshots and provide simple static links that can be used to retrieve the latest one.
Artifacts Metadata
Persistent metadata about artifacts
(1.4-M1)
Download stats (when by whom), original deployer, age.
User attached custom metadata
On both files or folders - no need to customize anything.
Searchable custom metadata
Including unique moving, copying & exporting of search results.
Strongly-typed user-defined Properties
Tag files and folders with you user defined searchable properties via the UI.
Prop-sets defined through UI as single/multi select or open, with the ability to assign default values, and associated with selected repos (Pro).
Custom metadata plugin.
Attach metadata as part of deployment
Attach metadata during Maven deployment or via simple REST - uploading external documents not required.
Full RDF metadata support.
Proxy remote metadata
Metadata for remote artifacts on another Artifactory is synced and proxied.
Security
Framework
Redback (database required)
Apache Shiro (formerly known as Jsecurity)
Role Based
Default Roles
Supports auto-join roles for newly created users, including ones from external realms
Users inherit default roles when they sign up.
Permissions per repository
Permissions per subset of repository or individual artifact
in future plans
Administrators per subset of repository
Allow external security
via Spring Security
via jsecurity realm
Allow external authentication
via Spring security or via pluggable realms written in Groovy
via jsecurity
Built-in enterprise user management features
via intuitive Ajax console
via Jsecurity + ExtJs user console. Full role based with the ability to specify permissions based on the path of the artifact (group/artifact/version) using regex if desired.
Support Prevention of Redeploy
Control over who can populate caches
Fully featured procurement support included in the pro version. This allows absolute control over the artifacts allowed through based on the artifact and user.
Support Protection of Sources / javadoc etc
Using Ant-like simple to understand patterns + OOTB templates for common include/excludes. Supports inclusion and exclusion so no need to used negative patterns for protecting sources etc.
Using the regex to control the paths, it is possible to secure separately any artifacts you want. Comes configured with targets to specify sources, which would allow you for example to have jars be downloaded anonymously but not the sources, even though they are sitting in the same repository.
Out of the box LDAP support
partially for authz
Configurable via the web UI
Including role mappings, Active Directory support and more.
Able to use LDAP groups (authorization from ldap)
Including highly optimized caching and comprehensive UI integration in Pro.
(Open Sourced in 1.5+)
Supports multiple realms in order (ie LDAP then fallback to internal)
With control of whether to fallback to internal users or not.
Including Kerberos and native NTLM in Pro.
ordered control of cascading though configured realms -- as many as you have installed.
Delegate authentication requests to your Crowd server, get transparent SSO in a Crowd-enabled SSO environment, sync and manage permissions for Crowd groups in Pro.
Security integration with Atlassian Crowd provided by Pro plugin.
SSO with any SAML IdP (Identity Provider). Artifactory can act as a SAML Service Provider.
Secured settings.xml passwords
functionality already available in Maven 2.1.0
Centrally-controlled encrypted password policy so admins do not have to rely on clients security policy. Auto-generated encrypted passwords can be used in your settings.xml or with non Maven REST clients, such as Ivy, Gradle etc.
Overcomes Maven drawbacks (including Maven 2.1+) - Maven decrypts the password to clear-text on the client, and keeps a clear-text master password on the filesystem.
(we added the functionality to Maven core - 2.1.0)
Client features
Out of the box generation of downloadable from the UI Maven's settings.xml, Ivy's settings.xml and Gradle's initial build script
Maven, Ivy and Gradle settings files can be templatized and provisioned via Artifactory (using standard FreeMarker templates).
Maven settings can be templatized and provisioned using Nexus Maven plugin (Pro)
Artifactory Gradle Plugin allows easy configuration of Gradle by using DSL
Nexus Maven Plugin
Multiple CI servers support
Supports Jenkins/Hudson, TeamCity and Bamboo
Trace build environment
Captures all build environment vars and system properties + CI-server specific vars (build, parent build, agent details etc.)
Trace published build artifacts and dependencies.
Captures all published artifacts and effective build dependencies (after final version resolution) from all scopes (including plug-ins) + visual view of per-module artifacts & dependencies in Pro.
Bi-directional links from/to CI sevrer
Can link from any build to its captured build info in artifactory and from any artifact to the builds it is associated with in the CI server.
CI-Build Promotion
Can promote CI builds to target repositories with selective scopes (e.g. promote all artifacts and all compile-time dependencies). Also via REST (Pro).
Optimized Deployment
Deploys all artifacts in one go only at the end of a successful build (Maven deploys partial modules for a broken multi-module build).
Database
Apache Derby (default)
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Apache Derby (default)
MySQL
PostgreSQL
Oracle
MS SQL Server
Nexus is scalable to thousands of simultaneous clients with Terabyte-scale repositories.
Traditional RDBMs clients present locking, storage, and concurrency issues that limit performance. Data is stored on a filesystem and indexes are maintained support search.
Database available for querying
configurable by datasources. Lucene index and REST api provided for searching.
Can be queried, but can also use REST API
n/a - Lucene index and REST api provided for searching.
Can run without database
Use by default an embedded Derby DB
Can use file-system storage. Database usage is recommended for fully transactional behavior of metadata not extractable from the artifact file itself.
- does not use a database - self heals metadata
Documentation
- available docs: site, wiki
- live instances: vmbuild, Atlassian, Exist(includes searchable Central repository)
- available doc: site, wiki, User Guide
- Live browsable and searchable demo
- available docs: site, Online Book and Printed Book
- live instancethat includes searchable Central repository
Repository Purge
Snapshot Purge
configurable by: retention count, # of days old and if released snapshots are to be deleted
configurable by retention count
configurable by: retention count, # of days old and if released snapshots are to be deleted
Unused Proxy artifact purge
Can evict unused artifacts from the proxy cache to conserve disk space.
Can evict unused artifacts from the proxy cache to conserve disk space.
Bulk Removal of Old Module Versions
Select multiple artifacts across directories, by version and clean them all up in one go, or select any section of the repository tree to delete.
You can select any section of the repository tree to delete, just like you would do on a file system.
Web Services
XMLRPC support in 1.2 (REST in 1.4-M1)
- full support: The Ajax communicates with the server via REST so all operations are available for Web service integration
Plugins Available
Pluggable repository consumers (ex. indexing consumer, repository purge consumer)
Build Integration - Use the Hudson Artifactory Plugin, TeamCity Plugin or Bamboo Plugin to deploy builds to Artifactory from Hudson/TeamCity together with build-time information. View builds in Artifactory with information about the deployed artifacts and dependencies (all scopes) and runtime environment per build, and link back to the CI Server to obtain fully-reproducible builds (some functions only in Pro).
Licence Control (Pro) - Take full control over licenses used by third-party dependencies as part of your builds and/or any file. Receive immediate notifications about any libraries that violate your organization's license policy, so you can deal with licensing issues early on during development.
Replication - Eagerly synchronize you repository content and metadata
Smart Searches and Promotion (Pro) to aggregate multiple search results and operate them in one go.
Properties (Pro) - Define custom searchable property sets and apply them to artifacts and folders.
P2 (Pro) - Proxy and host all your Eclipse® plugins via an Artifactory P2 repository, allowing users to have a single-access-point for all Eclipse® updates.
Yum (Pro) - Distribute RPMs directly from your Artifactory server, acting as fully-featured YUM repository with auto-updating repo metadata.
Nuget (Pro) - Host and proxy NuGet packages in Artifactory and pull libraries from Artifactory into your various Visual Studio .NET applications.
Advanced REST (Pro) - Bundles a set of power REST commands, such as: Build Promotion, repository replication, aggregated folder tree file-listing, move/copy, sophisticated range searches, etc.
Filtered Resources - Server dynamic textual resources based on item properties and request context
Custom (Non-Maven) Layouts (Pro) - Define the layout by which modules are identified for automatic version management, cleanup and cross-repository layout conversion
LDAP Groups (Pro) leverage your existing organizational LDAP structure for managing group-based permissions with super-fast caching and flexible mapping strategies.
Atlassian Crowd Integration (Pro) - Delegate authentication requests to your Crowd server, get transparent SSO in a Crowd-enabled SSO environment, sync and manage permissions for Crowd groups.
Watches (Pro) - Watch any repository path and receive focused email notifications.
Pluggable HTTP SSO (Pro) - Reuse exiting SSO infrastructures, such as Apache mod_ntlm, mod_kerberos, etc.
Web Start/Jar Signing (Pro) to sign jars upon request and deploy, host and serve dynamic modular Web Start applications.
Pluggable security realms
Nexus Crowd Plugin- provides security integration with Atlassian Crowd.
Nexus LVO Plugin - is a plugin for publishing "latest version of" over Nexus' REST API
Nexus Archetype Plugin - is a plugin for on-the-fly publishing of Maven Archetype Catalogs.
Nexus URL Realm - is a security realm that authenticates a user by attempting to login to a secured http/https url. This allows integration with anything supported by httpd or other web server.
Nexus Google Plugin - is a plugin for inserting Google Analytics code
Nexus LoopFuse Plugin - is a plugin for inserting LoopFuse code
Nexus Enterprise LDAP Plugin(Pro) - Extends the OSS version with redundancy, multiple servers/roots and enhanced templating and caching.
Nexus Archive Plugin (Pro) - Allows the user to browse the contents of archive resources on the fly, such as javadoc jars, sources jars etc.
Nexus Staging and Promotion Plugin(Pro)- Creates temporary staging repositories on the fly and allows automatic promotion to release repositories
Nexus Procurement Plugin(Pro)- provides firewall like controll over the artifacts being downloaded from external and internal sources. Used to assist business processes that require dependency review like License validation.
Nexus Configuration Backup (Pro) - Schedule full backup of the configuration files
Team Settings Synchronization (Pro) - Allows an admin to define a Maven settings.xml template that can be downloaded and inserted with the nexus-maven-plugin. This allows easy team synchronization of settings.xml
Maven Site Plugin (Pro) - Allows deployment and hosting of your maven generated sites directly inside of Nexus. No more messing with webdav other other tools to host your sites.
Eclipse Update Site/ P2 OSGI Plugin (Pro) allows hosting and proxying of P2 repositories. This supports not only your built artifacts, but it is able to proxy and aggregate Eclipse Update sites to make management of your developer population easier.
OSGI Bundle Repository Plugin (Pro) supports deploying, hosting, proxying and converting OBR artifacts from M2.
Commercial Support
Cost
US$2,350 for unlimited users with Artifactory Pro
US$1,200 for 10 users included with Nexus Pro
US$5,400 for 50 users included with Nexus Pro
US$10,200 for 100 users included with Nexus Pro
