Overview

Several of the settings are common for local, remote and virtual repositories. These are found in the Basic Settings tab of the corresponding New/Edit screen under the General section. Additional settings may be found in the type-specific section according to the package types specified for the repository.

Common Basic Settings 

Common basic settings

Package Type
The Package Type must be specified when the repository is created, and once set, cannot be changed.
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").
Repository Layout
Sets the layout that the repository should use for storing and identifying modules. Artifactory will suggest a layout that corresponds to the package type defined, and index packages uploaded and calculate metadata accordingly.
Public Description
A free text field that describes the content and purpose of the repository.
Internal Description
A free text field to add additional notes about the repository. These are only visible to the Artifactory administrator.
Include and Exclude Patterns

The Include Patterns and the Exclude Patterns 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 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 Include Patterns and Exclude Patterns for a repository are as follows:

Include Patterns: org/apache/**,com/acme/**
Exclude Patterns: 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 Exclude pattern.

JFrog Xray Integration
If Artifactory is connected to an instance of Xray, indicates if the repository is indexed for analysis.

Avoiding Security Risks with an Exclude 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:

In this case, since Artifactory does not 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.

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 Exclude 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 Include Pattern

In a typical scenario, Artifactory will reference large all-purpose repositories such as 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.

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 Include 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 in the type-specific section for relevant package types.

Local and remote repository 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.

Blank (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.