Frequently Asked Questions

General Questions

  1. What problems does Artifactory solve?
  2. Why Artifactory? What's wrong with Maven Proxy or with similar offerings?
  3. With a database used for artifact storage, won't I be loosing control over my repository?
  4. After using Artifactory with Derby DB for storing my artifacts will I be forced to use Artifactory forever?
  5. Does Artifactory provide mirroring?
  6. Under what license is Artifactory distributed?
  7. How can I report a bug or ask for new features?
  8. What protocols can be used to proxy remote repositories?
  9. What Maven repository formats are supported?
  10. How does Artifactory resolve artifacts?
Usage
  1. How do I login to Artifactory for the first time? What are the default admin username and password?
  2. How do I build Artifactory from source? Maven tells me there are some missing dependencies.
  3. How do run Artifactory in debug mode?
  4. I am trying to browse repository directories by manually entering the repository URL in my browser, but I get nothing. What's going on?
  5. I am trying to use Artifactory with MS-IE, but some stuff seems not to be working correctly. What's wrong?
Live Demo
  1. How do I login to the online demo?
  2. I logged in as "guest" and now some of Artifactory's functions are not accessible or contain no data. What's going on?

General Questions

What problems does Artifactory solve?

We found out that, when working with Maven artifacts, most organizations need to have a reliable artifacts proxy service in place, for the following reasons:

  1. The public Maven repositories can become unreliable from time to time (down, highly busy, slow...). It is also not uncommon for broken or wrong artifacts to appear on these repositories. This unexpected behavior can fail the build and/or lead to non-reproducible build results, which for most enterprises is a must.
  2. It is expensive and inefficient for every developer inside the same organization to go and retrieve remote artifacts that are shared by nature.
  3. Without a mesh of proxies, there is no easy way to automatically share artifacts in multi-site development environments.
  4. There is often a need to globaly enforce and control the repositories and the artifacts included in a build in terms of: security, licensing, include/exclude patterns (do not look for inhouse artifacts on repo1), etc. This can only be achieved by a global proxy.
  5. As part of a normal build Maven will send update queries to its public repositories, even for organization internal artifacts. Such query requests going over the internet may reveal sensitive information about your ongoing projects, which the organization would like to keep private. Using Artifactory's include/exclude patterns allows you to avoid internal artifacts from being queried on the internet.

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Why Artifactory? What's wrong with Maven Proxy or with similar offerings?

We created Artifactory after using the legacy Codehaus Maven-Proxy project. We soon found out we needed to have many bug fixed as well as additional advanced features implemented, such as security, indexing, web-based deployment, multiple local repositories, etc.

After playing with the existing codebase, we soon realized that we are refactoring and changing too much than can be submitted as patches, so we decided to go and create Artifactory.

In fact, Artifactory still carries some excellent concepts and implementations from the original Maven Proxy.

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With a database used for artifact storage, won't I be loosing control over my repository?

On the contrary. Using JCR and a DB for storage not only offers a superior technical solution, but also allows for greater control over your repository. Artifactory provides browsing, deploying and undeploying through an Ajax web UI which allows doing all common administrative operations in a security-aware fashion.

Additionally, if you wish to import or export your repositories to the file system or execute scheduled backups of your repositories to regular file system directories, Artifactory allows you to do that.

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After using Artifactory with Derby DB for storing my artifacts will I be forced to use Artifactory forever?

Of course not. This is why we created the Import/Export/Backup features, to allow Artifactory users to create a standard file-system based Maven2 repository out of the Artifactory DB repositories.

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Does Artifactory provide mirroring?

No. Artifactory uses controlled caches of remote repositories, not mirroring. Caches are populated lazily upon request, so it is only when Maven starts hitting it with requests that caches start to fill up with artifacts. Indexing is done completely by Jackrabbit and, unlike with mirroring, is up to date immediately.

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Under what license is Artifactory distributed?

Artifactory uses the friendly Apache License, Version 2.0.

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How can I report a bug or ask for new features?

By submitting a request to JIRA .

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What protocols can be used to proxy remote repositories?

At the moment, only HTTP(S)-enabled remote repositories are supported (including other Artifactory repositories). We do not have concrete plans to support other types of protocols.

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What Maven repository formats are supported?

Artifactory supports only Maven 2 repositories. Maven 1 repositories are becoming rare and are not supported natively (but are usually proxied as Maven 2 repositories by Apache httpd).

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How does Artifactory resolve artifacts?

Artifactory always looks up artifatcs in the following order:

  1. Local repositories
  2. Remote repository caches
  3. Remote repositories


The iteration between repositories (of the same type) is by the order they are decalred in the configuration.

As of version 1.2.1, Artifactory supports only the following built-in aggregation schemes:

  1. A global virtual repo of all local repositories + all remote repositories and their caches.

    Using the URL: :/artifactory/repo]]>
  2. Any single local repository + all remote repositories and their caches.

    Using the URL: :/artifactory/]]>
  3. Any single cache repository + all remote repositories and their caches.

    Using the URL: :/artifactory/-cache]]>


We are working on adding support for virtual repositories, which will allow you to for aggregate any set of local and remote repositories under an alias, and to use that alias as a virtual repository.

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Usage

How do I login to Artifactory for the first time? What are the default admin username and password?

Artifactory comes with a preconfigured default admin" account. Username: admin, Password: password .

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How do I build Artifactory from source? Maven tells me there are some missing dependencies.

Simply download the source and run mvn clean install from within the module named "parent".

To gain access to open source dependencies not currently deployed on Maven's public repositories, you have to run mvn with the "jfrog" profile: mvn clean install -Pjfrog .

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How do run Artifactory in debug mode?

Just change the right line in the $ARTIFACTORY_HOME/etc/log4j.properties file to: log4j.logger.org.artifactory=DEBUG

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I am trying to browse repository directories by manually entering the repository URL in my browser, but I get nothing. What's going on?

Artifactory does not expose directory browsing through URLs. An explorer-like feature-reach browsing is enabled through the dedicated "Browse repository" page.

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I am trying to use Artifactory with MS-IE, but some stuff seems not to be working correctly. What's wrong?

Artifactory is best when viewed in FireFox. Use FireFox ;)

Seriousely, we are doing our best to maintain cross browser behavior, but since our resources are limited, Firefox always comes first.

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Live Demo

How do I login to the online demo?

To login use the read-only "guest" account. Username: guest, Password: guest .

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I logged in as "guest" and now some of Artifactory's functions are not accessible or contain no data. What's going on?

Being a public demo, the "guest" account is a limited read-only account.

If you wish to use administrative or more privileged operations please download and install a local instance of Artifactory.

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