The old JBoss Maven repository (http://repository.jboss.org/maven2) is no longer available.  This repository has been deprecated since we migrated to Nexus over a year ago and we want to make sure everyone switches over to the new repo.  I'll try to answer some common questions here.

What about existing builds using the old repository or rebuilding old projects dependent on the old repo?

If you have builds using the old repository, the recommended solution is to update the repository configuration in your POMs and/or settings.xml.  If you are unable to update the POMs, another option is to add a mirror configuration to your settings.xml.

   <mirror>
    <id>jboss-public</id>
    <name>JBoss Public Nexus Repository</name>
    <url>https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
    <mirrorOf>jboss</mirrorOf>
  </mirror>

Why not just provide the new content at the old URL via redirect or other means?

During our migration to Nexus we reorganized the repository, and moved a lot of bad content out of the old repository.  So there isn't any new repository which contains the exact same content as the old one.  Although we may re-enable the old URL with the new content at some point in the future.

What if a build needs artifacts that are missing from the new repository?

If you find an artifact not available in the "public" Nexus group, it was probably deprecated so you should fix the dependency on that artifact.  If this is not possible, you can use the "deprecated" repository in Nexus.  More information is available on the page JBoss Deprecated Repository

Other questions/comments?

Please feel free to create a jira request (https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBBUILD), or post in the build forum (http://community.jboss.org/en/build?view=discussions).

The french company Antelink is now providing a free public mirror of the JBoss.org Maven repositories.  This repository provides a faster way for users in France and other areas of Europe to download JBoss artifacts for their builds.  The Antelink repository is running the Nexus repository manager, and includes a "public-jboss" repository group with contents matching the JBoss.org "public-jboss" group.  In addition, individual proxy repositories are provided for the hosted JBoss.org releases and thirdparty-releases repositories.  The full list of repositories can be viewed using the Nexus web interface.

http://maven.antelink.com/

Using Maven, there are several options for configuring your build repositories via the project pom and/or Maven settings.  The recommended way to use the new mirror without affecting existing POM configuration, is to use the Maven mirror settings located in Maven settings.xml.

  <mirrors>
    ...
    <mirror>
      <id>antelink-public-jboss-mirror</id>
      <name>Antelink mirror of the JBoss.org Maven repository</name>
      <url>http://maven.antelink.com/content/groups/public-jboss/</url>
      <mirrorOf>jboss-public-repository-group</mirrorOf>
    </mirror>    ...
  </mirrors>

Note: The antelink mirror does not include the JBoss snapshots repository, so this may need to configured separately if your build requires snapshot artifacts.

Thanks to Antelink for providing this mirror!

The repository.jboss.org Nexus repository indexes and the search features of the repository now seem to be working correctly.  We've had multiple problems in the past correctly generating repository indexes, but after upgrading to Nexus 1.9.0.2 and migrating away from our old audit plugin (now replaced by the standard Nexus upload tracking), the index generation works correctly.  The repository search also has an improved UI and seems significantly faster than our old Nexus configuration.

We ran into an issue today where someone uploaded a bad version of a POM to the JBoss "thirdparty-uploads" repository.  This was taking priority over the correct POM in central, and causing build issues.  So here are some quick rules about how to correctly deploy to the JBoss Nexus repository.

Deploying a JBoss Project Release

If you are a developer of a JBoss project and you are uploading a project release you should upload to the staging URL

https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/service/local/staging/deploy/maven2/

More information is available on the page Maven Deploying a Release

Deploying a Thirdparty Project Release

If you are a JBoss developer and you need to patch and rebuild a thirdparty project, from Apache for example, you should follow these steps.

1. Check out the upstream sources
2. Apply any required patches (these should also be submitted to the upstream project, if possible)
3. Add a jbossorg qualifier to the version in the POM (see Maven Deploying a Thirdparty Release )
4. Deploy the artifact(s) the same way JBoss releases are deployed.  Nexus will automatically stage these artifacts to go to the "thirdparty-releases" repository based on the Maven groupId.

Uploading a Thirdparty Binary Artifact

If you want to make a thirdparty released jar available in the JBoss repository, you should first check if the jar is already available in a thirdparty Maven repo.  If yes, then you can request that a new proxy repository be added to repository.jboss.org using the JBBUILD jira project.  The proxy repository can then be used via one of the main JBoss repo URLs.

If it is not available in any repository, then you can upload the artifact by following the instructions in the page Uploading a Thirdparty Artifact

We have completed the upgrade of our Nexus instance (https://repository.jboss.org/nexus/).  The upgrade went smoothly, however this upgrade requires a full rebuild of the Nexus index files.  The index generation seems to be resource intensive and is causing our Nexus instance to respond slowly to new requests.  This should be resolved sometime today when the index generation is complete.

There are some notable improvements in the new version.

• The search interface is improved and you should no longer see messages like "too many results".
• The staging repositories all all grouped together now, so you can just click on the "Staging Repositories" link to find your repo during a release.
• Better handling of remote proxy repository failures.

Today we will be updating the wiki documentation which describes Nexus usage to relect changes in the new version.

We have an upcoming presentation that will discuss using Maven repositories and specifically the JBoss.org Maven repositories.  The presentation will be given internally for Red Hat employees tomorrow (June 15), and then basically the same presentation will be given to the public as part of the JBoss developer webinar series (http://www.jboss.org/webinars) on June 16.  For a summary of the presentation or to register (it's free), please see the description on the webinar page.  I'm posting the presentation slides here.  They may change slightly between now and Wednesday, but probably not too much.

Update (July 6, 2010)

Attached the final copy of the slides which were used in the presentation.

We are continuing to work on improving the performance of the Maven repository.  Last week Sonatype suggested that we remove the custom-metadata-plugin due to a possible memory leak.  We also increased the amount of memory available to Nexus from 512 MB to 1024 MB.  This was done Monday (Apr 26) evening and the server was restarted.  This seems to have improved the memory issues.

We also had a problem starting last Thursday (Apr 29) where certain maven metadata files could not be downloaded.  The server logs contained an error message about too many files being open on the server.  Gradually more files became locked until the whole system became unresponsive.  After restarting Nexus, this problem disappeared.  The operating system open files limit on the server has also been increased to avoid this problem in the future.

This week Sonatype made a configuration change to our authentication configuration (moving the internal Nexus realm before the http realm) which should improve the performance of the security system, and reduced some of the errors/warning we were seeing in the logs.  We have also noticed some timeouts (http://community.jboss.org/thread/151522) when deploying snapshots to the server, but we have not yet determined the cause of this.

In the near future we're also planning to change the configuration of our QA environment (hudson) which should reduce the load on our main repository server.  We're also planning to upgrade Nexus to version 1.6.0 which includes many bug fixes.

The JBoss.org team is happy to announce a new Maven repository configuration.  Starting April 19, 2010, JBoss.org will be using the Nexus repository manager to provide a more robust and fully featured set of Maven repositories.  The goal is to make it easier for JBoss.org developers to release and manage project artifacts, and easier for the JBoss users to locate and use the dependencies necessary for their builds.

Background

The old JBoss.org Maven repository consisted of a single directory structure containing all JBoss project dependencies.  This caused problems for many users because there was duplication between the JBoss repository and other Maven repositories (such as the Maven central repository).  The new JBoss system will provide a set of more focused repositories that can be used separately or grouped together into a single repository view.  Detailed information about the organization of the new repositories can be found in the JBoss wiki ( Maven Repository Organization )

The old repository URL ( http://repository.jboss.org/maven2 ) will continue to be available in a read-only mode with the existing repository content.  This means that you don't need to switch to the new repository immediately, but all new releases should be deployed to the new system, so you will need to gradually migrate to the new repositories.  The next sections provide important information to be aware of before you start using the new repository.

Before Getting Started

There are a few things you should be aware of before you switch to the new repository URLs.

1. Deprecated Repository - In an effort to clean up the JBoss repository, many artifacts have been moved to a "deprecated" repository.  This repository will not automatically be visible to your builds when using the new repository group URLs.  This means that if your build currently uses one or more deprecated artifacts, the short term solution is to add extra configuration to your Maven settings.  Specific configuration information is available in the getting started pages.  The long term solution is to update your project dependencies to use artifacts from one of the release repositories.
2. Repository Performance - The new repository is more complex and will initially be significantly slower when downloading dependencies.  This will improve over time as the proxy repositories are populated, and we will continue to work to improve any additional repository performance problems.

Getting Started for JBoss Users

The new repository provides a search interface for easily locating the files you need.  It also provides more flexibility to download only the artifacts that you need.  Instead of a single large repository containing a mix of JBoss and thirdparty artifacts, there will now be several smaller repositories which allow you to choose only JBoss project artifacts, or a larger combined set of artifacts.

The new repository interface is available at https://repository.jboss.org/nexus.

A complete guide for configuring your Maven builds is now available in the wiki Maven Getting Started - Users

Getting Started for JBoss Developers

Note: the developer repositories will be available soon after svn.jboss.org comes back on line.

The new repository provides several new features for JBoss developers:

• Releases will be automatically staged for testing and review so you won't have to worry about accidentally deploying a broken release
• Deployment to any of the repositories will now use a simple http URL instead of multiple confusing options for deployment
• Deployments will update the repository immediately, so you won't have to wait for the repository to sync before seeing your release.
• The combined contents of JBoss repository artifacts and thirdparty repositories will be available through a single URL, or through separate URLs depending on your choice of configuration.
• The repository will automatically save any artifacts used from thirdparty repositories, so it will no longer be necessary to manually copy dependencies from thirdparty repositories.

A complete guide to configuring your environment is now available in the wiki Maven Getting Started - Developers

Help

If you can't find the answer to your question on the wiki or you find problems with the repository, please communicate these issues through the JBBUILD Jira Project or through the build system forum.

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