Snapshot Repository v/s Release Repository

Question

This is a newbie Q, but

What is the difference between a Snapshot Repository v/s Release Repository?

This is with reference to setting up Repositories (like Artifactory, Nexus etc)

Answer 1

What is this in relation to? Source control? It's not standard terminology as far as I know but I might guess that a snapshot was used as a picture of a source tree at a point in time (probably for internal use), while a release is used for the code that is released externally.

Answer 2

Release repositories hold releases and Snapshot repositories hold snapshots. In maven a snapshot is defined as an artifact with a version ending in -SNAPSHOT. When deployed, the snapshot is turned into a timestamp. By definition, snapshots are mutable, releases are immutable. This is why Nexus makes you store them separately because usually you don't care if you lose snapshots, but you will care if you lose releases. It makes snapshot cleanup much easier to deal with that way.