Overview
Several of the settings are the same for the different repository types. These are found in the Basic Settings tab of the corresponding Edit dialog and are described below.
Common Basic Settings
Repository Key
The Repository Key is a mandatory identifier for the repository and must be unique within an Artifactory instance. It cannot begin with a number or contain spaces or special characters. For local repositories we recommend using a "-local" suffix (e.g. "libs-release-local").
Public Description
A free text field that describes the content and purpose of the repository.
Internal Notes
A free text field to add additional notes about the repository. These are only visible to the Artifactory administrator.
Includes and Excludes Pattern
The Includes Pattern and the Excludes Pattern fields provide a way to filter out specific repositories when trying to resolve the location of different artifacts.
In each field you can specify a comma separated list of Ant-like patterns to filter-in and filter-out artifact queries. Filtering works by subtracting the excluded patterns (default is none) from the included patterns (default is all).
Example:
Consider that the Includes Pattern and Excludes Pattern for a repository are as follows:
Includes Pattern: org/apache/**,com/acme/** Excludes Pattern: com/acme/exp-project/**
In this case Artifactory will search the repository for org/apache/maven/parent/1/1.pom and com/acme/project-x/core/1.0/nit-1.0.jar but not for com/acme/exp-project/core/1.1/san-1.1.jar because com/acme/exp-project/** is specified as an Excludes Pattern.
Avoiding Security Risks with an Excludes Pattern
Any proprietary artifacts you deploy to Artifactory are stored within local repositories so that they are available for secured and authorized internal use.
Anyone searching for one of your internal artifacts by name will extract it through Artifactory from the local repository.
However, consider what happens if a request for an internal artifact is inadvertently directed outside of the organization.
Two examples of how this could happen are:
- there is a simple typo in the requested artifact name
- the developer has requested a snapshot with a version number that does not exist.
In this case, since Artifactory does find the requested artifact in a local repository, it continues to search through the remote repositories defined in the system. Artifactory will, in fact, search through all the remote repositories defined in your system before returning "Not found".
This presents a security risk since any request made on a remote repository may be logged exposing all details of the query including the full artifact name which may include sensitive business information.
Best practices using an excludes pattern for remote repositories to avoid security risks
To avoid exposing sensitive business information as described above, we strongly recommend the following best practices:
- The list of remote repositories used in an organization should be managed under a single virtual repository to which all requests are directed
- All internal artifacts should be specified in the Excludes Pattern field of the virtual repository (or alternatively, of each remote repository) using wildcard characters to encapsulate the widest possible specification of internal artifacts.
Avoiding Performance Issues with an Includes Pattern
In a typical scenario, Artifactory will reference large all-purpose repositories such as JCenter or Maven Central for resolving artifacts.
In addition, Artifactory may reference any number of additional repositories which may host a more specialized and specific set of of artifacts.
If Artifactory receives a request for a deterministic set of artifacts (e.g. a specific version of an artifact), then it searches through the different repositories according to its resolution order until the artifact is found.
However, if Artifactory receives a request for a non-deterministic set of artifacts ( e.g. all versions of maven-metadata.xml) then it must search through all of the repositories it references until it can provide a complete response.
In most cases, the majority of artifacts downloaded by an organization will come from one of the large all-purpose repositories, but in non-deterministic requests performance is downgraded because Artifactory continues to search through all the specialized repositories before it can return a response.
Best practices using an includes pattern for remote repositories to avoid needless and wasteful search
To avoid performing needless and wasteful search when responding to non-deterministic requests we strongly recommend that all specialized repositories be configured with an appropriate Includes Pattern specifying only the set of artifacts that the organization might need.
In this case, non-deterministic requests for artifacts that are typically found in general purpose repositories will skip over the specialized repositories thereby improving performance.
Local and Remote Repositories
In addition to the settings above, Local and Remote repositories share the following settings.
Max Unique Snapshots
Specifies the maximum number of unique snapshots of the same artifact that should be stored. Once this number is reached and a new snapshot is uploaded, the oldest stored snapshot is removed automatically.
A value of 0 (default) indicates that there is no limit on the number of unique snapshots.
Handle Releases
If set, Artifactory allows you to deploy release artifacts into this repository.
Handle Snapshots
If set, Artifactory allows you to deploy snapshot artifacts into this repository.
Blacked Out
If set, Artifactory ignores this repository when trying to resolve artifacts. The repository is also not available for download or deployment of artifacts.