Should we use Nexus or Artifactory for a Maven Repo?

Question

We are using Maven for a large build process (> 100 modules). We have been storing our external dependencies in source control, and using that to update a local repo.

However, we are ready to graduate to a local repo that can cache central so that we don't have to proactively download all 3rd parties (but we can still have a local repo to pull from). In addition we want to publish our internal build artifacts from a nightly build so that developers don't have to build the world.

We are considering Nexus and Artifactory. What are the reasons for preferring one over the other? Are there others we should be considering?

Answer 1

I don't know about Artifactory but here are my reasons for using Nexus:

• Dead simple install (and since 1.2, dead simple upgrade, too)
• Very good web UI
• Easy to maintain, almost no administrative overhead
• Provides you with RSS feeds of recently installed, broken artifacts and errors
• It can group several repositories so you can mirror several sources but need only one or two entries in your settings.xml
• Deploying from Maven works out of the box (no need for WebDAV hacks, etc).
• it's free
• You can redirect access paths (i.e. some broken pom.xml requires "a.b.c" from "xxx"). Instead of patching the POM, you can fix the bug in Nexus and redirect the request to the place where the artifact really is.

Answer 2

Artifactory stores the artifacts in a database, which means that if something goes wrong, all your artifacts are gone. Nexus uses a flat file for your precious artifacts so you don't have to worry about them all getting lost.

Answer 3

You should use Artifactory Its latest version was a real jump You can backup incrementally your repositories , which means you can have all your artifacts saved and maintain Its has a easy to use web ui and is really easy to set up i enjoyed it a lot check out its new version 2.0

Answer 4

http://blogs.sonatype.com/people/2009/01/contrasting-nexus-and-artifactory/

Answer 5

Your link is not too objective, here's the other side response

http://blogs.jfrog.org/2009/01/contrasting-artifactory-and-nexus.html

Answer 6

All politics/religion aside, licensing makes a difference for some organizations.

Nexus is GPL, Artifactory is Apache licensed LGPLv3 licensed as of version 2.1. Licensing differences between the two that may have been considered relevant in the past are lesser now (ha ha).

You may also want to consider Archiva, just for comparison's sake.

Answer 7

Both Artifactory and Nexus have more or less similar feature set but Artifactory's LDAP support makes it more attractive over Nexus. Though Nexus also have LDAP support but in paid version :-(

Answer 8

I made some research recenly about Artifactory 2 and Nexus 1.3. I'll list here the main differences I found:

• Artifactory stores data in DB, Nexus writes directly to file system. There are pros. and cons. for each approach. DB supports transactions, while in FS stored files can be accessed directly.
• Artifactory has higher system requirements especially for disk space.
• Artifactory has LDAP support, while Nexus has it only in paid version. On the other hand free LDAP plugin for Nexus is available on Google code.

The most complete comparison: http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/Maven+Repository+Manager+Feature+Matrix

Answer 9

Artifactory supports both file-system and database storage backends. Storage is checksum based and identical binaries are stored only once, no matter how many times they appear in the repo, which makes Artifactory more efficient storage-wise. Move and copy are also very cheap because of this architecture (in Nexus there's no REST for move/copy - you have to move stuff on the file system, then run corrective actions on the repo to let it know content has changed).

Another important differentiator is Artifactory has unique integration with Hudson and TeamCity for capturing information about deployed artifacts, resolved dependencies and environment data associated with build runs, which provides full build traceability.

Answer 10

Deffinately choose Nexus. The database usage of Artifactory is awful and will constantly chew up disk space and get progressively slower.

Answer 11

@Steven: What you are saying about Artifactory is not based on fact or is just showing your ignorance -

Our Artifactory server is serving hundreds of thousands of artifacts for a couple of years now, using MySQL as the backend, with no slowdowns or disk usage issues. I also find Artifactory to be much more feature-rich and more polished compared to Nexus.

Finally, I prefer a tool that is not so much Maven oriented and will support rising competing build technologies like Gradle, which we are evaluating at the moment.

Answer 12

@Rob Firstly, I have used both nexus and artifactory extensively and these are proven facts.

You will kick yourself if you ever have to migrate servers for artifactory and have to migrate a database rather than just a directory structure.

Enjoy your constant re-indexing and database compressions.