Overview

Artifactory allows you to define a virtual repository which is a collection of local, remote and other virtual repositories under a single logical URL.

A virtual repository hides the underlying repositories and lets users work with a single, well-known URL, while allowing you to change the participating repositories and their rules without requiring any client-side changes.

The main features supported by a virtual repository are:

1. Nesting
2. Include Exclude patterns filter
3. Automatic removal of repository references
4. WebStart automatic signing and JNLP file conversion

Setting Up a Virtual Repository

From the Admin tab go to Configuration -> Repositories -> Virtual Repositories and create a new virtual repository.

Add the repositories you want to be part of the virtual repositories to the virtual repository list of selected repositories.

The actual list of effectively resolved repositories (after expanding nested virtual repositories) is displayed and automatically updated.

Nesting Virtual Repositories

The ability to nest virtual repositories is unique to Artifactory. It allows for greater reuse of virtual repositories between themselves.

Include Exclude Patterns in Virtual Repositories

The coupling of Include/Exclude patterns of Artifactory Configuring Repositories to virtual repositories nesting provides a powerful feature.

You can define in a single virtual repository "remote-repos" the company groupId exclusion, and it ensures that no requests for internal artifacts are sent externally.

 Another example for this feature, is defining virtual repository for a project and filter undesirable groupId, sources or versions, that are not visible to developers.

Serving Requests from Other Artifactory Instances

By marking the 'Artifactory Requests Can Retrieve Remote Artifacts' checkbox, you can instruct Artifactory whether the virtual repository should include remote repositories in artifacts resolution when answering requests coming from other Artifactory instances. This is useful when deploying Artifactory in a mesh (grid) architecture, where you do not want all remote Artifactories to act as remote proxies for other Artifactory instances.

Ensuring Artifactory is Your Sole Artifacts Provider

One very bad practice often used on public POMs, is to add a direct reference to an external repository in a POM. When either of the code examples below are present, Maven dynamically adds an external repository URL to the build.  This shortcuts Artifactory.

or

Until now, the solution was using mirrorOf as described here.

Artifactory provides at the virtual repository level, an automatic cleanup of POM file. Three levels of cleanup policy are configurable:

1. Discard Active References - Removes repository elements that are declared directly under project or under a profile in the same pom that is activeByDefault.
2. Discard Any References - Removes all repository elements regardless of whether they are included in an active profile or not.
3. Nothing - Does not remove any repository elements declared in the POM.

Pre-canned Repositories

Artifactory comes with a set of per-defined virtual repositories, which reflect binary management best practices.