Mini evaluation of Maven repository managers

If your company is using some kind of dependency management system (for example Ivy or Maven) it is strongly recommended that you use a company-repository. This repository has two purposes:

• Cache of third party libraries to speed up fetching (it really makes a difference!)
• Releasesof your own software to it is available to the others in the company.

The simplest repository is just a directory, perhaps mounted via an external file system. But this has limitations. A better alternative is to use a repository manager. Such a manager is a layer above the repository that provides all kinds of features (searching, uploading, auto-purging to save disc space etc).

As of today there are three Maven repository managers (see http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/Maven+Repository+Manager+Feature+Matrix): Archiva, Artifactory and Nexus.

I have made a small evaluation (I have tried them for about 30 min each). I must say that they are all very similar. They will all probably work for you. They are all web based.

My favorite for now is Nexus. This is because the GUI is rather simple, you can create virtual groups of repositories.

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