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Nexus 1.9 – Performance, Compatibility, and Dependency Browsing

Brian Fox — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:29:33 +0000

Sonatype has released the latest version of our industry leading repository manager – Nexus 1.9.1

This post outlines some of the new features available in all 1.9 releases of both Nexus Professional and Nexus Open Source. This release has a lot of important, under-the-hood changes – including a number of changes to the core infrastructure of Nexus to increase Maven 3 compatibility and to incorporate open source libraries for repository interaction (Aether and Maven Indexer). In addition to a wide array of fixes and features in Nexus Open Source, you can now use Nexus Professional to analyze Maven Dependencies.

Changes in Nexus Professional 1.9.1

Nexus Professional has the following key benefits. For a complete list of all features added and bugs fixed in Nexus Professional 1.9.1, see the official release notes (note: release notes require a log-in).

Moved the Custom Metadata Plugin to optional plugins – This Custom Metadata plugin is now shipped as an optional dependency. If you are using the Custom Metadata plugin you will need to copy this plugin from the optional dependencies directory to the plugins directory. Nexus will then start up this plugin the next time it is restarted.
The New Maven Module Dependency Report – Nexus Professional adds a helpful report for people browsing the repository. For the first time, you can click on an artifact and see a report of Maven dependencies. From this report you can click through to search for dependencies.

Changes in Nexus Open Source

Nexus Open Source 1.9.1 contains the following new features and updated capabilities. We’ve summarized some of the major features and bug fixes for your convenience. If you are looking for more details about a particular feature or fix, read the full release notes for a comprehensive list of features added and bugs fixed.

New Nexus Archetype Plugin - Nexus 1.9.1 will now add any Maven Archetypes you deploy to your own repositories to the archetype catalog. Once an archetype is available in the archetype catalog, you can then access archetypes using tools like m2eclipse, which reference the archetype catalog when creating a new project.
Uses the Maven Indexer - Sonatype has successfully completed the donation of the Nexus Indexer to the Apache Software Foundation, and we are integrating this newly donated “Maven Indexer” in this release of Nexus. For more information, read this post.
Improvements to the Roles and Permissions Interface - The Nexus team spend a considerable amount of time trying to simplify the Roles and Permissions interface based on user feedback. We’ve tried to make it easier to understand at first glance, and we’re also tried to reduce the amount of work necessary to make changes to roles and permissions.
Integrated Aether - Aether is a new open source library designed to capture best practices for retrieving information from Maven repositories. It provides a clean interface and manages fetching both metadata and artifacts. This version of Nexus incorporates Aether and replaces Mercury. Integrating Aether has also solved a number of minor issues involving Maven metadata and compatibility with Maven 3.
Switched to Java 6 - Nexus has upgraded to Java 6.
Nexus Upgraded Security from JSecurity to Apache Shiro - As an end-user you shouldn’t notice many changes in the interface to support this migration, but if you are developing custom security realms for Nexus, this post describes some of the changes you need to make to support the move to Shiro. Note: After this upgrade, both first name and last name are required fields for a user. If you have an existing user that only have one name (“Administrator”), you will need to supply a first and last name for this user if you ever edit this user through Nexus UI.
Added robots.txt to bundle to stop public repos from getting crawled
Improved Reindexing Performance - Reindexing performance has been considerably improved, achieving a nearly 2x speed up for certain repositories.
Switched to the Affero General Public License - Nexus Open Source is now covered under the Affero General Public License. For more information about this switch see this post.
Added a Start-up Script for 64-bit windows Platforms – If you are running Nexus on a 64-bit Window platform, you can now start Nexus with a 64-bit Windows JSW startup wrapper.

For information on upgrading Nexus, click here.

What's New in Nexus Open Source 1.7.0?

Brian Fox — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:39:53 +0000

Sonatype is happy to announce the availability of Nexus 1.7. We’ve cut a new release for both Nexus Open Source and Nexus Professional. This post walks through the changes introduced to Nexus Open Source.

New Features in Nexus Open Source

With this release, Nexus Open Source gains the following features:

Improved, Drill Down Artifact Search Interface
Repository Groups can contain both Repositories and other Repository Groups

Improved, Drill Down Artifact Search Inteface

When you search for artifacts in Nexus 1.7 you will be presented with a drill down search interface. We made this change to make it easier to search for artifacts, which might return hundreds of results. Using the drill down search inteface, you can quickly navigate to just the artifacts you are interested in.

NOTE:

We have changed the local format of the lucene indexes, it is required that users reindex all repositories in their Nexus server to start benefitting from the changes (and for search to work properly).

Groups of Groups

Repository Groups can now contain other Repository Groups. This change has already come in handy for developers who want to create variations of the standard public repository group. If you have a series of repository groups which are all similar, you can capture these similarities in another group.

Sonatype is continually making efforts to improve Nexus and make investments in the open source community. Stay tuned for new features in Nexus Professional.

Announcing Nexus 1.5.0: LDAP, Archive Browsing, Javadoc, and More

Damian Bradicich — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:32:40 +0000

Sonatype is pleased to announce the availability of Nexus 1.5.0. The major announcement? We’ve moved our LDAP integration into Nexus Open Source. In addition to the LDAP changes, this release also contains some important features: Nexus Open Source now ships with the Remote Repository Browsing plugin, and Nexus Professional now has the capability to browse repository archives and serve Javadoc. Nexus Professional has two new plugins: the new Enterprise LDAP plugin which supports multiple LDAP servers and provides caching options for LDAP integration, and a new Branding plugin which allows you to customize the appearance of the Nexus UI.

Downloading Nexus 1.5.0

If you are already using Nexus, it is easy to upgrade. Download the distribution, unpack it next to your sonatype-work/ directory – that’s all it takes to upgrade. If you haven’t installed Nexus yet, download a distribution, unpack it, and run the appropriate script under ${nexus_home}/bin/jsw. If you are not yet using a repository manager, now’s the time.

The rest of this post provides an overview of some of the release highlights.

Nexus Open Source 1.5.0 Highlights

For more details, see the Nexus Open Source 1.5.0 Release Notes.

LDAP Integration in Nexus OSS: The existing Professional LDAP plugin has been moved to the OSS code base, and is now available with the OSS release (there is a new Professional plugin that greatly enhances functionality as well).

Remote Repository Browsing: We have integrated the Remote Repository Browser plugin as well, this plugin was contributed by Anders Hammar, and allows browsing of remote proxy repositories. This feature is especially handy if you are working with remote repositories hosted on Amazon’s S3 service (such as the SpringSource repository). Since it isn’t possible to browse an S3-based repository in a web browser, you can use the remote repository browsing tab to directly inspect the contents of a remote repository with the Nexus UI:

Expanded Set of Default Proxy Repositories: New installations of Nexus will now have an expanded set of default proxy repository. This release of Nexus adds proxy repositories for Google Code and java.net’s Maven 2 and Maven 1 repositories.

Nexus Professional 1.5.0 Highlights

Enterprise LDAP Plugin: Enhancement to Nexus LDAP configuration, allowing for detailed configuration of cache parameters, configuring multiple LDAP servers, using backup mirrors, and more.

Archive Browser Plugin: Now you can view the content of common archive files (zip, jar, ear and war) right in nexus, from the storage browser, search results and index browser. Simply click on the desired archive file, and you can now browse it.

Viewing Javadoc from Nexus: In Nexus Professional, when you are browsing a repository, you can now right-click on a Javadoc artifact and select View Javadoc.

Customize the Nexus Interface with Your Logo: The optional Nexus Branding plugin, adds a branding image that will override the Sonatype logo in upper left hand portion of UI. You can define a path to a .png file in (nexus-base-dir)/conf/plexus.properties. The key is named branding.image.path.

Nexus Open Source or Professional: Which One is Right for You?

Tim O'Brien — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:00:45 +0000

We’re frequently getting questions from users about the differences between Nexus Open Source and Nexus Professional, and the standard response we give is:

“If you work for an organization that needs support or which needs staging and procurement, you’ll want to use Nexus Professional. If you are new to repository management, and you just want to evaluate the technology, download Nexus Open Source. If you find that you need support or enterprise features, it is easy enough to upgrade from OSS to Pro.”

I wanted to take this post as an opportunity to expand on that general answer and provide more specific use cases that would affect this decision

Use Nexus Open Source…

…if you are new to Repository Management.: If you are new to repository management, the easiest way to introduce yourself to the benefits is to download Nexus Open Source, and experiment with Hosted and Proxy repositories. You should get a sense of how Maven Settings are configured to retrieve artifacts from a single Repository Group, and you should download a copy of the free Nexus book – Repository Management with Nexus. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with Nexus Open Source, you can easily upgrade to Nexus Professional by downloading and installing Nexus Professional. Nexus stores all of your repository data and configuration in a directory named sonatype-work which is separate from the Nexus application directory.
…if you are looking for more stability and control.: If you depend directly on public repositories such as the Central Maven repository or the various repositories maintained by organizations like Codehaus or the Apache Software Foundation, you rely on these servers to be available to your developers 100% of the time. If a public repository goes down for maintenance, so does your development process. With a local proxy of Maven artifacts, you buy yourself a stable, isolated build. Even if a public repositories becomes unavailable, you will still be able to build your software against artifacts cached in your own Nexus installation.
…if you need to manage internal software distribution.: If your organization needs to support collaboration between internal teams, you can use Nexus to support the distribution of internal software. With Nexus, sharing components between internal groups is as easy as adding a dependency from Maven Central. Just publish a JAR to Nexus, configure the appropriate repositories groups and inform others in our organization of the Maven coordinates. Using a repository management doesn’t just make it easier to proxy external software artifacts, it makes it easier to share internal artifacts.
…if you need an intelligent local proxy.: Many developers run Nexus on a local workstation as a way to gain more control over the repositories used by Nexus. This is also a great way to start evaluating Nexus. Download and install Nexus on your local workstation and point your Maven settings at http://localhost:8081/nexus. When you need to add a new repository, all you need to do is change the configuration of your local Nexus installation.

Use Nexus Professional…

…if you are looking for Professional Support.: When you purchase Nexus Professional, you are purchasing one year of support from the team that created the industry-standard in repository management. With Nexus Professional, you not only get a capable repository manager, you get the peace of mind that help is just a phone call away. Sonatype also offers an array of implementation and migration services for organizations looking for an extra level of assistance.
…if you need a repository manager that can support release and quality assurance decisions.: Nexus Professional’s Staging Suite can track the status of a software release and make sure that different decision makers are notified and supported during a software release. If you are looking for a repository manager that can automate and support software releases, download Nexus Professional and start learning about Staged repositories and Staging Rulesets. When you start using Nexus Professional, your operations, quality assurance, and development teams can use the repository manager as a central point of collaboration.
…if you need more control over external artifacts.: If you need more control over which external artifacts can be referenced and used in internal projects, you will need to use the Nexus Procurement Suite which is a part of Nexus Professional. While repositories like Maven Central are a great convenience, allowing your developers carte blanche access to any external library is often unacceptable in today’s legal and regulatory environment. Nexus Professional’s Procurement Suite allows you to enforce standards for external libraries. If you want to ensure that every dependency is evalautated for security or license compliance, download Nexus Professional.
…if you develop software for an Open Source project.: Are you developing an open source project? If so, most open source projects qualify for a free Nexus Professional license. Open source projects can qualify for a free Professional license, or they can take advantage of free Nexus Professional hosting on http://oss.sonatype.org. Sonatype is very committed to supporting the development of quality open source and this is our way of giving back to the community.
…if you are developing and deploying to OSGi platforms.: If you are developing OSGi components using OBR repositories, or if you are developing OSGi components using the P2 repository format, you will need to use the OSGi support available in the Nexus Professional distribution. Nexus Professional supports a wider array of repository formats than Nexus Open Source. As the industry moves toward OSGi as a standard, you should be using a product which supports these emerging standards as well as the existing repository formats used by millions of developers.
…if you need to integrate with Enterprise Security.: If you need to integrate Nexus with an Atlassian Crowd server or an enterprise LDAP server, download Nexus Professional. While Nexus Open Source provides extension points for writing custom security realms, Nexus Professional provides documented integration with popular LDAP servers such as OpenLDAP, Microsoft’s Active Directory Server, and any other directory product which implements the LDAP standard.

Comparing Nexus Open Source and Nexus Professional Features

The following table summarizes the differences between Nexus Open Source and Nexus Professional: