Overview

Artifactory exposes Maven indexes for use by Maven integrations of common IDEs ( for example, IntelliJ IDEA, NetBeans, Eclipse).

Indexes are fetched remotely from remote repositories that provide them and are calculated for local and virtual repositories (note that many repositories do not provide indexes, or do not keep an updated index).

If Artifactory cannot find a remote index, it calculates one locally, based on the remote repository's previously cached artifacts.

The indexing performed by Artifactory is secure, immediately effective and supports a larger variety of search options, including custom metadata searches.

Maven indexes only exist in Artifactory for the purpose IDE integrations. They are periodically calculated, contain a limited set of data and are non-secure by design.

Information about the content of a repository is exposed to anyone with access to the repository's index, regardless of any effective path permission you have in place. If this is a concern, do not expose an index for that repository.

The Maven Indexer service is only available on Artifactory SaaS dedicated servers.

 

Usage

To administer Maven indexes, in the Admin module select Services | Maven Indexer.

Artifactory provides you with controls to specify how frequently indexing is run and which repositories are included in the index calculation.

Enabled
When set, indexing is enabled and will run according to the Cron Expression setting
Cron Expression
A valid expression that determines the frequency in which Maven indexes on the selected repositories will be recalculated
Next Indexing Time
Indicates the next scheduled indexing run
Run Indexing Now
Invokes indexing immediately
Included Repositories
Specifies the repositories that should be indexed on the next run
Excluded Repositories
Specifies the repositories that should not be indexed on the next run
Clear All
Removes all repositories from the Included Repositories list

Calculating and indexing for a repository may be a resource intensive operation, especially for a large local repository or if the repository is a virtual one containing other underlying repositories.

Therefore, we recommend that you do not include repositories that do not require indexing for a periodic index calculation.