Artifactory - a new Maven 2 Repository Manager for Enterprises
From the Maven 2 user list:
We would like to announce the immediate availability of Artifactory, a Maven 2 enterprise proxy.
Artifactory offers advanced proxying, caching and security facilities to answer the needs of a robust, reproducible and independent build environment using Maven 2.
It uses a JSR-170 Java Content Repository (JCR) for storage, which makes it extremely easy to manage searchable metadata, and provide extended features such as security, transacted operations, auditing, locking, etc.
Artifactory is distributed under APLv2 at http://artifactory.sourceforge.net. It is currently available as a downloadable archive, that can be run out of the box (with default settings). An install script to run it as a Linux service is also provided. A (limited) guest live demo is available at http://www.jfrog.org/artifactory (username/password is guest/guest).
You are welcome to give it a go!
Cheers,
Yoav Landman,
The Artifactory Team
So how does this compare to Archiva, Proximity and Maven Proxy? One user writes (formatted for better reading):
- Archiva: Alpha; doesn't work (random webdav deployment failures), loads of bugs, low rate of progress. Feels dead.
- Proximity: Works; slightly confusing (don't like the separation of metadata); lots of new releases constantly; hard to configure (hacking around with spring config files) - our install takes *forever* to restart.
- m2proxy: simple, but simple.
It's interesting to see that Artifactory's UI is powered by Wicket and Dojo. The demo seems kind of sluggish, but I don't believe this application is meant to handle more than 10 users at a time. For more information on Artifactory's features, see its introduction page.
It's great to see a (seemingly) good tool come out for internal repository management.
I spent a couple days last week analyzing the best open source continuous integration server for Maven 2 projects. Hudson turned out to be the clear winner with the best UI and easiest setup. It also actually worked, which is a lot more than I can say for Continuum. While I did get Continuum to work, it required turning on anonymous SVN (no, putting the username/password in the URL did not work). CruiseControl worked as well, but required config.xml knowledge, which sometimes scares admins. Pulse and Bamboo continue to be the best commercial Maven 2 testers, while TeamCity failed my 10-minute test (twice!). One of the features I was looking for was Trac integration and that only exists for CruiseControl and Continuum.
It's amazing to see projects like Continuum and Archiva. If they're any reflection of the Maven team's ability to develop software, that's frightening. My advice: discontinue both of these projects as they're a waste of anyone's time to even research them.
Update October 2009: Fast forward a couple years and I take back what I said about the Maven's team ability to develop good software. Nexus is a kick-ass Repository Manager.