Restricting local Nexus repository to access Central

Question

We are planning to release our corporate nexus repository to the developers. The problem in hand is that, we would like to enforce standards on the versions of jars that could be downloaded from the repository. For example, If we already have Spring framework version 3 available in nexus as an organization standard, then the developers cannot download the latest version of the spring eg 3.3 using nexus unless it is approved by the technical architect.

One can say that there is no way to do it since the developers can directly point to central and download the jars. But this scenario will be handled in the daily hudson CI build which uses jars from nexus only.

Our initial proposal was to set up nexus with agreed versions of the libraries and then to change the nexus proxy settings so that it cannot reach central. Is there a better idea than this?

Answer 1

Looks like you could use one of the features of Nexus Professional:

A procurement suite which allows Nexus administrators to define inclusion and exclusion rules for artifacts in proxy repositories

See the chapter on Nexus Procurement Suite from the online reference.