Introducing the Alfresco Artifacts Repository – yes, with Alfresco Enterprise :)

Native American Artifacts

It’s my honor – and a a huge personal satisfaction after a few years working on this – to announce the full availability and support of the Alfresco Artifacts Repository, a fully fledged Maven repository hosting the major Alfresco releases and of its flourishing projects ecosystem, both for the Alfresco Community and Enterprise Networks.

For those of you already following this blog this might be no big news, as somehow the information was already around in the Alfresco-sphere and an Alfresco Maven repository has been already unofficially (AKA maintained by me) around for a while. But the great news is that now the repository is officially maintained and artifacts are kept up to date

Based on the Nexus OSS mature Artifact Repository technology, and following a few weeks Partner only beta, the repository is now publicly available at:

http://artifacts.alfresco.com (formerly http://maven.alfresco.com)

The Alfresco Artifact Repository

What can you find in there (AKA the screenshot is not enough)? Very well, at the moment the Artifact Repository hosts:

1. Alfresco Community full releases (JARs/WARs) identified with the groupId org.alfresco

• Easy unauthenticated Community access via the aggregated Public releases group. Check the wiki for Maven configuration settings!
• For an example on how to configure other build tools, check public examples

• If you are an Alfresco Enterprise Customer or Partner you can follow the procedure described in the Alfresco Support KB article to gain access to the Enterprise repository.

• This Alfresco Support KB article explains how to get access for Premiere and Premiere advantage customers.

NOTE: At the moment no POM files / dependency declarations are available, but if you are interested please feel free to vote on this issue

Still not sure about the potential? Well, let me just give you an idea:

• Integration in your standard Enterprise development process, enabling automation and simple version management
• Choose your development flavor: whether you like the Maven SDK,  you are a Gradle fan or  whether you work with any of the Maven compatible technologies, you can download Alfresco artifacts with just a few lines of code. See an example (for a Spring dependency) on how a Maven repository can adapt to your development technology
• Have Sources and Javadocs promptly available in your IDE if it’s Maven compliant: in Eclipse, for example, if you have M2Eclipse installed, adding your dependency will automatically result in -sources.jar and -javadoc.jar to be downloaded, enabling in-line documentation and remote debugging for advanced troubleshooting. Neat’o, ain’t it?
• Powerful Artifact identification and search engine, allowing artifact, GAV (groupId, artifactId, version) and even class name search (YES, it searches in JARs :P) . In the picture, just an example on how to filter on all Alfresco 4.0d Community artifacts

For full documentation on how to use the repository with Maven, please refer to the dedicated wiki page. And if you are missing an Artifact, please open an issue in the appropriate Jira Component or in Alfresco Support if your are an Enterprise Customer.

We really hope the introduction of a fully supported Artifact repository could be a great driver for simple participation and contribution in the exciting Alfresco ecosystem: and I expect more news to come, that should make (at least Maven and Gradle) Alfresco developers re-joy all over the world.

Ok, I’m maybe being too Italianly dramatic here, but stay tuned because in the next months we will bring our platform and extended ecosystem to the next level.  And let me take time to thank the people who helped making this happen: this would not have happened without them and their support

For now, time to open your Champagne Prosecco – as a good friend suggested – bottles and enjoy your well deserved repository

About Gabriele Columbro

Grown in the flourishing Open Source Enterprise ecosystem of the last decade, bringing a wealth of expertise on ECM and Application Lifecycle Management, both in terms of Product and People leadership. With a masters thesis on Business Process Re-engineering on a fully open source stack and 10 years in the tech business between Services, Sales and Engineering, he developed a full-spectrum technical and business expertise, in the context of large scale Enterprise Content Management projects for key government and Fortune 500 global customers.