Sonatype Blog » Book

Nexus Bolsters Component Management Capabilities

Manfred Moser — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:57:20 +0000

When Maven Repository Managers (MRM) first appeared on developers’ radar, everyone using them immediately saw the benefits. Right off the bat, MRMs replaced cobbled together solutions like shared drives or local Maven repositories copied and exposed via http.

Since its release four years ago, Sonatype Nexus has grown to support many repository formats. And most users of build tools including Gradle, Leiningen, SBT and Ant/Ivy have started to realize the numerous benefits of using a repository manager.

Using an MRM has become accepted best practice for Maven users.

The benefits of proxying external repositories and deploying third party artifacts are only the beginning. Things really take off when you start deploying your internal components to Nexus, making them immediately available to everyone.

Nexus: More Than Basic Repository Management

Nexus is evolving to help you manage the security and licensing aspects of your components. In order to show you how, we have made this a focus of the latest release of the book Repository Management with Nexus.

The book now shows you how to access Insight information for a particular artifact. There are concrete examples on how to inspect and fix security issues, thanks to the information available in your Nexus search results and the linked information on the public security databases.

Note: When you read this, don’t forget to configure your Routing correctly to ensure that aspect of your Component Lifecycle Management (CLM) efforts is covered and no information about internal artifacts leaks to the public.

Part of your effort to get control over your component usage is to secure your sources. Part of that effort is to start using the Central Repository via secured access.

If you are using Nexus Professional this is as easy as upgrading to 2.2 and changing the Remote Storage Location URL. It is also available now for Nexus OSS by getting a $10 token here and making the same changes. Other repository managers will be supported soon.

Nexus 2.2 Now Included in Nexus Book

We have also made improvements and general updates to cover the latest Nexus 2.2 release. Among the topics changed are settings.xml setup explanations, documentation for capabilities, updates to the plugin creation chapter and many more.

Still, with all these improvements we realize that nothing is perfect and you might have questions or ideas for enhancing the book. If that’s the case, we encourage you to file issues with your wishes or attend one of our Nexus training classes. Also, don’t forget that the book is open source and we do take fixes as pull requests.

Component Lifecycle Management is Key

These improvements to Nexus are part of a larger Component Lifecycle Management solution that is provided by Sonatype. CLM helps you ensure the integrity of component-based software by analyzing usage and providing governance and policy enforcement during development.

As demonstrated by these Nexus improvements, CLM is integrated directly into your development infrastructure – including IDE, CI and repository manager tool of choice.

Hudson book coming soon!

hloney — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:51:29 +0000

Sonatype is happy to be helping the Hudson community with our support of the Hudson book.

The goal of the Hudson book is to be the authoritative source of documentation for Hudson users. We expect it to be available soon. Stay tuned to this blog for updates on the availability of the Hudson book.

For the perspective of one of the key contributors to the project, see Manfred Moser’s recent blog post, “Hudson – Book, Changes, and Community.“

Since the [Hudson] project lives on github it is pretty easy to follow the usual clone, branch, hack, commit, pull request sort of flow and thanks to Maven the build is as easy as .. surprise .. mvn clean install.

Read more of Manfred’s blog on Simpligility.

Minor Update to the m2eclipse Book (Edition 1.2)

Tim O'Brien — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 07:00:53 +0000

At Sonatype, our books are constantly evolving and we’re planning on some big changes in the m2eclipse book over the next few months including new information about how to use m2eclipse in concert with our other product offerings Nexus and Matrix. Today, a much smaller change: announcing a very minor update to the Sonatype m2eclipse book.

Edition 1.2 contains the following minor updates:

Added a new appendix: Appendix B, Contributing to the m2eclipse Book. This chapter provides some of the basic information would be required by someone looking to participate in the book project including information about the tools used to write the book, how to clone the Git repository, and how to execute the Maven build for this book. (MEBOOK-78 and MEBOOK-79)
The book now contains instructions for people who want to subscribe to the book announcement mailing list. (MEBOOK-77)
Updated the Book’s copyright to 2011. (MEBOOK-74 and MEBOOK-82)
Update version of m2eclipse to 0.12.0. (MEBOOK-84)

Download the m2eclipse Book PDF by filling out the following form:

http://go.sonatype.com/forms/DevEclipseMaven

Read the m2eclipse Book online at

http://www.sonatype.com/books/m2eclipse-book/reference/

Maven by Example: Minor Update to Edition 0.5.2

Tim O'Brien — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 16:30:57 +0000

Sonatype used to make a habit of posting updates for every single book update no matter how major of minor the update might be, and several of you use told us that you miss these posts. To this end, we’re happy to announce a minor update to Maven by Example.

Maven by Example is our introductory Maven book. The chapters in this book used to be the first half of Maven: The Definitive Guide, and once that book grew beyond 500-pages we decided to split it up into Maven by Example and Maven: The Complete Reference.

While this particular update is very minor, we’re busy laying the groundwork for a refresh of both of our Maven titles over the next few months.

Here is a comprehensive list of changes in Maven by Example Edition 0.5.2:

Fixed example download link (MVNEX-123)
Fixed a minor typo in Section 5.2, “Defining the Simple Web Application”. “one which that” -> “one using” (MVNEX-108)
Implemented some minor reordering issues in Section 6.3, “The Simple Weather Module” to make sure that the WeatherService example is referenced before it is listed (MVNEX-89)
Added a clarifying sentence to the end of Section 4.13.1, “Attaching the Assembly Goal to the Package Phase” to make it clear that the package phase comes before the install phase and that running mvn install will have the same effect
Fixed an incorrect email address in Section 2, “Your Feedback” (MVNEX-128)
Fixed an incorrect Sonatype Blog URL in Foreword: 0.5.2-SNAPSHOT (MVNEX-127)
Standardized the capitalization of all figure and example titles throughout the book (MVNEX-26)

Special thanks to:

Andreas Grunewald for reporting various issues and typos throughout the book.
Ion Iovu for identifying typos in the book.
John Yeary for catching hard to find cross referencing issues and various other issues.
Grant Birchmeier for catching capitalization errors throughout the book.

You can read Maven by Example online or you can register for a download by clicking here.

Repository Management with Nexus

Sonatype — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:00:18 +0000

Sonatype books are the essential references for anyone working with Apache Maven, repository management, and integrating Maven with Eclipse.

Learn best practices, central concepts, and complete integration for Maven, Nexus Professional, and m2eclipse. Sonatype books offer the latest content for the software development tools you depend on.

The third book in our series of books available for downloading is Repository Management with Nexus.

Nexus Professional is a next-generation repository manager that can proxy remote repositories, host internal repositories, encourage collaboration, and increase efficiency.

Repository Management with Nexus walks you through the installation process for both the Open Source version of Nexus and Nexus Professional, and it covers important topics such as:

Installing Nexus as a Service on a Linux Machine
Nexus Best Practices
Managing Security with Nexus’ Fully Customizable Role-based Authentication System
Reading Nexus System Logs
Installing Nexus as a WAR in an Existing Application Server
Configuring Nexus Professional’s LDAP Authentication Realm
Configuring Nexus Professional’s Staging and Procurement Features

To download Repository Management with Nexus, please click here.

"Maven: The Complete Reference" Now Available as an epub

Tim O'Brien — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 20:08:56 +0000

Sonatype is pleased to announce the availability of our most popular book, Maven: The Complete Reference, as an epub. Click here access the book and start reading this book on a mobile device.

If you have any questions or feedback, we encourage you to send email to book@sonatype.com. If you have any problems to report, please include the section number and the type of mobile device you are reading this book on. This book has been tested on iPad, iPhone, Sony Reader library and the Adobe Digital Edition reader.

If you are new to Maven, don’t forget to check out Nexus Open Source and Nexus Professional. If you develop with Maven, you should be using Nexus. Once you start using a Repository Manager, you won’t believe you ever developed without one.

Update: The epub version of this book has been deprecated, since current mobile devices all display pdf formats easily and the epub version had very limited users, while requiring a lot of maintenance. The links on this article have been changed to point to the books site.

Beta Version of Nexus Book ePub Now Available

Tim O'Brien — Sat, 29 May 2010 19:11:24 +0000

We’ve published an initial, beta version of an ePub book for Nexus. To download it, go to the Nexus Book website, and click on the ePub download link. After filling out a simple registration form, you will receive an email pointing you to the download.

The current ePub file weighs in at 16 MB, and it contains all of the content from the online and PDF version of the book. eBook readers are a constantly moving target, from large format readers like the Kindle, Sony Reader, and iPad to smaller mobile platforms like Android and iPhone, and there is wide variation in how ePub readers interpret CSS and format text.

While we’ve done some basic initial testing to make sure that content is readable, there are still going to be some issues with code line width and figure sizes. We’re looking for feedback on usability. If you download this epub, take some time to let us know at book@sonatype.com. Let us know: what device you were using, if you find code listings to be unusable due to width limitations, if you able to view all of the figures. We’re especially interested in feedback from people viewing this content on an iPad.

We’ve tested this book on the Sony Reader emulator and in the Adode Digital Editions reader. As you can see, there are going to be some issues with figure width. Wide figures may be truncated on the Sony Reader and other eBook readers. We continuing to investigate strategies for creating smaller, eBook-friendly versions of book figures.

Special thanks to Brian Jackson for taking the initiative to fork the Nexus Book git repository and add support for epub. In the process of adding this epub support, Brian also submitted some patches to the docbkx-maven-plugin.

Nexus Book Update: Nexus 1.5 Content and Community-driven Corrections

Tim O'Brien — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:48:06 +0000

The latest edition of Repository Management with Nexus, Edition 2.1, has been released. This edition includes new content about Nexus 1.5.0 Open Source and Enterprise LDAP. Edition 2.1 also contains almost 100 corrections which were driven by the community.

The following changes were introduced in Edition 2.1 in February, 2010:

Updated content for the Nexus 1.5.0 Release
- Updated Nexus Open Source version to 1.5.0 (NXBOOK-433)
- Updated Nexus Professional version to 1.5.0.2 (NXBOOK-434)
- Added information about the Open Source LDAP Feature to Section 1.2.1, “Nexus Open Source Features”. (NXBOOK-435)
- Added information about the Enterprise LDAP Feature to Section 1.3.1, “Nexus Professional Features”. (NXBOOK-437)
- Updated Section 1.4, “Choosing a Nexus Edition” to reflect the LDAP feature changes.
- Updated Chapter 2, Repository Management to reflect the LDAP feature changes.
- Added Section 7.6, “Enterprise LDAP Support”. (NXBOOK-436)
Througout Chapter 8, Nexus Procurement Suite there are alternating references to a strategy known both as the “Secured Development Repository” and the “Procured Development Repository”. To avoid confusion the strategy is now referred to as “Procured Development Repository”. (NXBOOK-420)
Removed the Nexus Plugins chapter. This chapter was incomplete and incorrect. Until we can commit to a larger survey of available Nexus plugin, it makes sense to remove this chapter. (NXBOOK-445)
Updated Figure 1.1, “Sonatype Nexus Feature Matrix” to include Nexus 1.5.0 features. (NXBOOK-421)
Section 3.4, “Running Nexus” contained a reference to a login dialog figure that has been removed. This reference has been removed. (NXBOOK-402)
Section 7.3, “Connection and Authentication” stated that the LDAP authentication user had to be a user with administrative rights to the LDAP server. This is incorrect, copy updated to state that the user simply needs to have privileges to read all users and groups. (NXBOOK-31)
Added labels to figures in Chapter 16, Artifact Bundles. All of these figures were missing proper labels. (NXBOOK-328)
Updated the copyright year.
Numerous updates to Chapter 9, Nexus Staging Suite
- Rewrote portions of Section 9.1, “Introduction” to make the introduction more straightforward for new users. (NXBOOK-423)
- Changed the “Installing Staging Suite” section to Section 9.2, “Using the Nexus Staging Suite”. Since the Nexus Staging Suite is bundled with Nexus Professional, it doesn’t make any sense to provide installation instructions. (NXBOOK-425)
- Made sure to reference that target created in Section 9.3.1, “Configuring a Staging Target” from Section 9.3.2, “Configuring Staging Profiles”. In the previous edition, we made no mention of the Sonatype Sample target when creating the staging profile. This change makes the section more direct, you define profiles to be activated when an artifact matches a repository target. (NXBOOK-429)
- Reordered the sections in Section 9.3, “Configuring Staging Profiles”. The previous edition started with role assignment. This doesn’t make sense in the workflow of defining a Staging repository because the act of defining a Staging Profile creates several new roles. (NXBOOK-428)
- Added “Close Staging Repository Rulesets” to Section 9.3.2, “Configuring Staging Profiles”. (NXBOOK-430)
- Fixed a label problem with Figure 9.3, “Enterprise Menu after Staging Suite Installation”. (NXBOOK-427)
- Added some lists to Section 9.3.3, “Adding the Staging Deployer Role” to clarify the staging roles. The previous edition lacked an explicit list of the roles created by a Staging Profile. (NXBOOK-426)
Fix typos through the book (most issues subtasks of NXBOOK-256 and NXBOOK-220)
- Fix a typo in Section 5.7, “Log Files and Configuration”. “Logs and Config Files is only visible” is now “The Logs and Config Files link is only visible” (NXBOOK-258)
- Fixed a typo in Section 2.1.3, “Getting Control of Dependencies”. “producing a application” is now “producing an application”. (NXBOOK-255)
- Fixed a typo in Section 9.6.2, “Defining Rulesets for Promotion”. “Nexus Professional was check” is now “Nexus Professional will check”. (NXBOOK-416)
- Fixed a spelling error in Section 9.5, “Uploading a Staged Deployment in Nexus”. “expose a button labelled” is now “expose a button labeled”. (NXBOOK-259)
- Fixed a typo in Section 5.5, “Uploading Artifacts”. “When you build makes use” is now “When your build makes use”. (NXBOOK-260)
- Fixed a typo in Section C.3, “Configuring Nexus to Serve SSL”. “this instructions” is now “these instructions”. (NXBOOK-261)
- Fixed a typo in Section C.3, “Configuring Nexus to Serve SSL”. “But, Jetty can easily” is now “Jetty can also”. (NXBOOK-262)
- Fixed a typo in Section A.7, “Configuring Artifactory Clients to Use Nexus”. “identifer” is now “identifier”. (NXBOOK-264)
- Fixed a typo in Section A.5.2, “Configuring Artifactory Repository Imports”. “Repostiores” is now “Repositories”. (NXBOOK-265)
- Fixed a sentence structure issue in Section A.1, “Introduction”. “using a web application which exposes” is now “using a web application, exposing”. (NXBOOK-266)
- Fixed a sentence structure issue in Section 5.5, “Uploading Artifacts”. Fixed a spelling error in same section. “labelled” is now “labeled”. (NXBOOK-269)
- Fixed a few typos in Section 9.3.2, “Configuring Staging Profiles”. (NXBOOK-271)
- Fixed a spelling error “LDAP Integeration” is now “LDAP Integration” in Figure 1.1, “Sonatype Nexus Feature Matrix”. (NXBOOK-408)
- Fixed typos in Section 1.3.1, “Nexus Professional Features”.
  - “integration” changed to “integrate”. (NXBOOK-403)
  - “to sign up for [an] account” (NXBOOK-404)
- Fixed a typo in Section 2.3, “What is a Repository Manager”. “Once you start [to] rely…” (NXBOOK-405)
- Fixed a typo in Section 3.2.2, “Installing Nexus Open Source”: “whenever” -> “wherever” (NXBOOK-406)
- Fixed an error in Section 3.4, “Running Nexus”. Section was pointing to the wrong location for wrapper.log. (NXBOOK-401)
- Fixed a mispelling in Section 18.3, “Creating a Complex Plugin”. “ApplicaitonEventMulticaster” -> “ApplicationEventMulticaster” (NXBOOK-365)
- Fixed a spelling error in Section 8.1, “Introduction”. “funnelled” is now “funneled”. (NXBOOK-274)
- Fixed a typo in Section 7.5.2, “Mapping External Roles to Nexus Roles”. “bring a up” is now “bring up”. (NXBOOK-275)
- Fixed a typo in Section 7.5.1, “Mapping Nexus Roles for External Users”. “To explore these two sets of user[s]” (NXBOOK-278)
- Fixed a typo in the title of Table 7.9, “Group Element Mapping Configuration for posixGroup”. “posixAccount” should be “posixGroup” (NXBOOK-31)
- Reworded the initial sentence of Section 2.2.3, “Addressing Resources in a Repository” for clarity. (NXBOOK-252)
- Reworded portions of Section 2.2.4, “The Central Maven Repository”. (NXBOOK-252)
- Removed the first sentence of Section 2.4.3, “Ease the Burden on Central”. (NXBOOK-249)
- Fixed a spelling error in Section 2.4.6, “Deploy 3rd Party Artifacts”. “hand-crafting” is now “handcrafting” (NXBOOK-248)
- Fixed a that/which in Section 2.4.6, “Deploy 3rd Party Artifacts”. (NXBOOK-248)
- Added a hyphen to “developer-managed” in Section 2.5.1, “Stage Zero: Before Using a Repository Manager”. (NXBOOK-247)
- Fixed several sentence structure issues in Section 2.5.1, “Stage Zero: Before Using a Repository Manager”, Section 2.5.1, “Stage Zero: Before Using a Repository Manager”, and Section 2.5.3, “Stage Two: Hosting a Repository Manager”. (NXBOOK-246)
- Fixed a sentence structure issue in Section 2.5.3, “Stage Two: Hosting a Repository Manager”. (NXBOOK-245)
- Fixed sentence structure issues in Section 2.5.4, “Stage Three: Continuous Collaboration” and Section 2.5.5, “Stage Four: Lifecycle Integration”. (NXBOOK-244 and NXBOOK-243)
- Fixed a sentence structure issue in Section 3.2.2, “Installing Nexus Open Source”. (NXBOOK-239)
- Fixed a that/which issue in Section 3.2.3, “Installing Nexus Professional”. (NXBOOK-238)
- Fixed a typo in Section 18.1.2, “Nexus Extension Points”. “descriptor with is” is now “descriptor which is”. (NXBOOK-363)

The following individuals provided valuable feedback resulting in fixes and changes in Edition 2.1:

Anders Hammar
Brian Demers

How to Contribute to the Maven Books

Tim O'Brien — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:28:21 +0000

Manfed Moser, the author of the newly released Android chapter in Maven: The Complete Reference, wrote a very quick step-by-step set of instructions for people interested in contributing to the Maven book. Read the whole post here: http://www.simpligility.com/2010/02/how-to-contribute-to-the-maven-books/

Here’s an excerpt:

The first thing you will have to do is get the source code – after all the books are open source licensed and freely available to anyone. The books are found on github at http://github.com/sonatype/ and in the case of the reference book at http://github.com/sonatype/maven-reference-en. With the excellent help on github you can just fork the repository and get your own copy going locally. My copy for example is at http://github.com/mosabua/maven-reference-en Now thanks to the power of Maven and its conventions you get the book created as HTML website and PDF document by running, surprise, mvn clean install

Update to Maven Complete Reference: Flexmojos and Android (Edition 0.4)

Tim O'Brien — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:31:24 +0000

The latest edition of Maven: The Complete Reference, Edition 0.4, has been released. This edition updates the Flexmojos chapter to the latest FlexMojos 3.5.0 release and refreshes information about Flexmojos archetypes. We added an initial version of a chapter by Manfred Moser that walks through the process of using Maven to build Android applications. In addition to that we fixed some minor issues throughout the book that had been reported by the community.

A full list of changes in Edition 0.4:

Added a new chapter: Chapter 14, Android Application Development with Maven. (MVNREF-135)
Updated the Flexmojos version to 3.5.0 in Chapter 13, Developing with Flexmojos. (MVNREF-127)
- Added some clarification to Section 13.2.1, “Referencing a Repository with the Flex Framework” that suggests adding the flexmojos repository to an existing Nexus installation.
- Reorganized Section 13.2.1.2, “Proxying Sonatype’s Flexmojos Repository with Nexus”. Added level four headings to group content into more easily understood chunks with respect to Nexus configuration.
- Fixed minor typos throughout Chapter 13, Developing with Flexmojos.
- Updated all of the Flexmojos Maven Archetypes with most recent pom.xml content. Changes affected Section 13.3.1, “Creating a Flex Library”, Section 13.3.2, “Creating a Flex Application”, and Section 13.3.3, “Creating a Multi-module Project: Web Application with a Flex Dependency”.
- Removed the warnings in the multi-module project exampe in Section 13.3.3, “Creating a Multi-module Project: Web Application with a Flex Dependency”. There used to be a problem with the archetype module dependencies, this has been fixed in the recent Flexmojos releases.
Section 5.5.1, “Common Environments” was incorrect. The property defined in ~/.m2/settings.xml was not activating the profile defined in a project’s POM. This seciton has been corrected. (MVNREF-124)
Fixed a code overflow in Section 7.1.4, “Setting Execution Specific Parameters”. (MVNREF-118)
Fixed unescaped property references and a code overflow in Example 3.1, “The Super POM”. (MVNREF-117)

The following contributors provided invaluable feedback and contributions:

Emmanuel Hugonnet provided the issue report that prompted the update of the Flexmojos chapter to version 3.5.0.
Benjamin Bentmann reported an inconsistency in Section 5.5.1, “Common Environments”.
Manfred Moser was added as a primary author for contributing Chapter 14, Android Application Development with Maven.