Easy MRM installation? Hah!

[Joachim Durchholz <jo...@durchholz.org>]

Just to give the feedback: I've been told that installing a repository 
and an MRM is a breeze, takes a one-minute-install, etc. etc.

I should have read the implied fine print: This will work only for a 
strictly local install, and even then, there are snags.

1) When sitting behind a firewall in a Windows world, Java software has 
trouble connecting to the outside world. Neither Sun nor Oracle ever 
bothered to properly interface with NTLM, leaving the task to 
third-party developers that had sometimes more, sometimes less success. 
MRMs are no exception to that rule.

2) Getting the caching and proxying settings properly configured turned 
out to be really difficult. Nexus ultimately failed with that - for some 
reason, it would never work. I could Artifactory get to do my bidding, 
but the entire experience took me a full two days of work. For both 
products, one of the bigger problems was that error messages were not 
detailed enough.

3) Configuration was sometimes needlessly difficult. Nexus is a point in 
case - what's really just a simple set of fallbacks where to get your 
artifacts from turned out to be a bedazzling maze of "repositories", 
"routing", and something else I forgot (or maybe my memory is inventing 
that, I have been fighting too many different problems to keep track of 
all details).
Artifactory did a better job at making individual parts of the 
configuration testable, but some error situations from an Active 
Directory LDAP were utterly misleading. (I eventually gave up on LDAP, I 
found Artifactory's permission system utterly confusing and it wouldn't 
do what I wanted - here, Nexus was better.)

Some may remember that I was quite resistant to drink the MRM kool-aid.
I was even heavily scolded for that.
Well... what should I say... I don't consider myself an utter idiot, yet 
my resistance was all too well-founded, it seems. The message was "five 
minutes", neither MRM lived up to that promise.

<RANT MODE> I'M SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THAT MONEY-MAKING-MOTIVATED 
MISLABELING THAT HAS BECOME SO COMMON. At least the Apache guys never 
claimed that configuring it was easy, but in the Java world, everybody 
is trying to sell his Snake Oil relabelled as Kool-Aid.</RANT MODE>

Sorry. That needed to be blown off.
If you guys hadn't made so unrealistic and misleading promises, I might 
have praised what's working (which is quite a lot actually) instead of 
criticizing what isn't (which ultimately made Nexus fail, and 
Artifactory pass - barely and with slightly limited but sufficient 
functionality).

Regards,
Jo

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Re: Easy MRM installation? Hah!

[Baptiste MATHUS <ml...@batmat.net>]

+1. Sorry to hear you had quite a bad experience with it. I'm surprised
about the NTLM thing you speak about. Nexus has a proxy configuration and I
think my company also runs a NTLM proxy, it's just a matter of setting the
proxy host, port, and for us the user/passwd of the special dedicated user
(though we generally just request adding some servers, like Maven Central,
to the white list which doesn't require authenticating.).
But that won't change the fact that running a MRM is still the way to go
and simpler than anything else if you plan developing with others.

Cheers


2013/2/19 Anders Hammar <an...@hammar.net>

> Sorry to hear about your bad experience, but it's a fact that lots of
> people have got their MRM up and running in very little time. (However, I
> always talk about half a day, not minutes.) There could be a need of some
> tweaking after that, but it should at least work initially.
>
> /Anders
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 8:25 PM, Joachim Durchholz <jo...@durchholz.org>
> wrote:
>
> > Just to give the feedback: I've been told that installing a repository
> and
> > an MRM is a breeze, takes a one-minute-install, etc. etc.
> >
> > I should have read the implied fine print: This will work only for a
> > strictly local install, and even then, there are snags.
> >
> > 1) When sitting behind a firewall in a Windows world, Java software has
> > trouble connecting to the outside world. Neither Sun nor Oracle ever
> > bothered to properly interface with NTLM, leaving the task to third-party
> > developers that had sometimes more, sometimes less success. MRMs are no
> > exception to that rule.
> >
> > 2) Getting the caching and proxying settings properly configured turned
> > out to be really difficult. Nexus ultimately failed with that - for some
> > reason, it would never work. I could Artifactory get to do my bidding,
> but
> > the entire experience took me a full two days of work. For both products,
> > one of the bigger problems was that error messages were not detailed
> enough.
> >
> > 3) Configuration was sometimes needlessly difficult. Nexus is a point in
> > case - what's really just a simple set of fallbacks where to get your
> > artifacts from turned out to be a bedazzling maze of "repositories",
> > "routing", and something else I forgot (or maybe my memory is inventing
> > that, I have been fighting too many different problems to keep track of
> all
> > details).
> > Artifactory did a better job at making individual parts of the
> > configuration testable, but some error situations from an Active
> Directory
> > LDAP were utterly misleading. (I eventually gave up on LDAP, I found
> > Artifactory's permission system utterly confusing and it wouldn't do
> what I
> > wanted - here, Nexus was better.)
> >
> > Some may remember that I was quite resistant to drink the MRM kool-aid.
> > I was even heavily scolded for that.
> > Well... what should I say... I don't consider myself an utter idiot, yet
> > my resistance was all too well-founded, it seems. The message was "five
> > minutes", neither MRM lived up to that promise.
> >
> > <RANT MODE> I'M SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THAT MONEY-MAKING-MOTIVATED
> > MISLABELING THAT HAS BECOME SO COMMON. At least the Apache guys never
> > claimed that configuring it was easy, but in the Java world, everybody is
> > trying to sell his Snake Oil relabelled as Kool-Aid.</RANT MODE>
> >
> > Sorry. That needed to be blown off.
> > If you guys hadn't made so unrealistic and misleading promises, I might
> > have praised what's working (which is quite a lot actually) instead of
> > criticizing what isn't (which ultimately made Nexus fail, and Artifactory
> > pass - barely and with slightly limited but sufficient functionality).
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jo
> >
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------**---------
> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@maven.**apache.org<
> users-unsubscribe@maven.apache.org>
> > For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@maven.apache.org
> >
> >
>
> --
> Baptiste <Batmat> MATHUS - http://batmat.net
> Sauvez un arbre,
> Mangez un castor ! nbsp;!
>

Re: Easy MRM installation? Hah!

[Anders Hammar <an...@hammar.net>]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience, but it's a fact that lots of
people have got their MRM up and running in very little time. (However, I
always talk about half a day, not minutes.) There could be a need of some
tweaking after that, but it should at least work initially.

/Anders



On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 8:25 PM, Joachim Durchholz <jo...@durchholz.org> wrote:

> Just to give the feedback: I've been told that installing a repository and
> an MRM is a breeze, takes a one-minute-install, etc. etc.
>
> I should have read the implied fine print: This will work only for a
> strictly local install, and even then, there are snags.
>
> 1) When sitting behind a firewall in a Windows world, Java software has
> trouble connecting to the outside world. Neither Sun nor Oracle ever
> bothered to properly interface with NTLM, leaving the task to third-party
> developers that had sometimes more, sometimes less success. MRMs are no
> exception to that rule.
>
> 2) Getting the caching and proxying settings properly configured turned
> out to be really difficult. Nexus ultimately failed with that - for some
> reason, it would never work. I could Artifactory get to do my bidding, but
> the entire experience took me a full two days of work. For both products,
> one of the bigger problems was that error messages were not detailed enough.
>
> 3) Configuration was sometimes needlessly difficult. Nexus is a point in
> case - what's really just a simple set of fallbacks where to get your
> artifacts from turned out to be a bedazzling maze of "repositories",
> "routing", and something else I forgot (or maybe my memory is inventing
> that, I have been fighting too many different problems to keep track of all
> details).
> Artifactory did a better job at making individual parts of the
> configuration testable, but some error situations from an Active Directory
> LDAP were utterly misleading. (I eventually gave up on LDAP, I found
> Artifactory's permission system utterly confusing and it wouldn't do what I
> wanted - here, Nexus was better.)
>
> Some may remember that I was quite resistant to drink the MRM kool-aid.
> I was even heavily scolded for that.
> Well... what should I say... I don't consider myself an utter idiot, yet
> my resistance was all too well-founded, it seems. The message was "five
> minutes", neither MRM lived up to that promise.
>
> <RANT MODE> I'M SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THAT MONEY-MAKING-MOTIVATED
> MISLABELING THAT HAS BECOME SO COMMON. At least the Apache guys never
> claimed that configuring it was easy, but in the Java world, everybody is
> trying to sell his Snake Oil relabelled as Kool-Aid.</RANT MODE>
>
> Sorry. That needed to be blown off.
> If you guys hadn't made so unrealistic and misleading promises, I might
> have praised what's working (which is quite a lot actually) instead of
> criticizing what isn't (which ultimately made Nexus fail, and Artifactory
> pass - barely and with slightly limited but sufficient functionality).
>
> Regards,
> Jo
>
> ------------------------------**------------------------------**---------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@maven.**apache.org<us...@maven.apache.org>
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@maven.apache.org
>
>