> From: Noel J. Bergman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Wednesday, 26 November 2003 1:34 PM > > Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > I'm failing to see the requirement for us to do [virtual artifacts] > *now*. > > Because Apache projects using the repository would need also non-asf > > jars that we don't want to distribute -> virtual artifacts. > > I still maintain that non-ASF jars are specified in meta-data > made available > to client tools, and thus "virtual artifacts" are unnecessary. > > The meta-data files will need to be present repository in order for the > tools to work. > > --- Noel >
The idea behind virtual artifacts is that they allow users and tools to determine if an artifact is available or not. Given the artifact: http://repo.apache.org/sun/jndi/1.2.1/jars/jndi-1.2.1.jar A user browsing the repository on seeing "jndi-1.2.1.jar" can assume that a tool will be able to download it, regardless of whether the repository hosts it or not. Without the virtual artifact: . users might not be aware that corresponding meta-data indicates to tools that the real artifact is hosted elsewhere . tools would need to do a 2 stage lookup to find an artifact, even if its not present: 1. determine if the artifact is hosted directly 2. on failing [1], determine if there is any meta-data indicating that the tool should look elsewhere -Tim
