Since it was first published several years ago, the Nexus Maven Repository Index has become the defacto standard for gathering information about remote repositories and is currently in use by all the repository managers and IDE integrations. The Nexus index of Central is currently downloaded more than 2 million times a month, consisting of >12TB of data a month.
The index as I see it consists of two things: 1) The binary format that is used for the transport and 2) the code that produces and consumes the binary format. This code has been exclusively developed at Sonatype and is currently EPL licensed. We feel that interoperability is a key driver of the Maven ecosystem and the index should be included. We would like to propose relicensing the code to ASL and donate it to the Maven project where it can become part of the official Maven repository standard. We have been gathering documentation about the Index here[1] In addition to that, we have created a metadata format that is used to convey key pieces of information about a repository. You can read more about it in my comments here[2]. We would like to contribute this code as well, since this will further aid interoperability. Once we get this completed, we will have a good start to being able to produce a TCK that can be used to test and certify interoperability of various clients. [1] https://docs.sonatype.com/display/NX/Nexus+Indexer [2] http://java.dzone.com/articles/tale-two-repository-managers All the Indexer IP is owned by Sonatype and there are only three active developers that aren't currently Maven Committers, so this should be pretty easy process wise. Assuming no one has concerns accepting this code into the project, I'll move forward with the various formal votes and paperwork. Brian Fox ------------------------------- Chair, Apache Maven PMC VP Eng. Sonatype, Inc. -------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
