DSMP 1.0 - A new maven proxy

[Aaron Digulla <di...@hepe.com>]

Hello,

I had a couple of problems with Maven's way to access the internet. For
example, if I wanted to redirect maven to the closest mirror, I would
have to define a whole lot of mirrors in my settings.xml. And it
wouldn't always work because different projects use different IDs.

Then, there are the broken artefacts on the main servers. Or how about
PMD 3.8? You need it? Well, maybe in a few months (when the project has
released 3.10), it might show up on the central repository servers.

Or have you ever tried to configure Maven to use a snapshot version of
one plugin but the stable versions for all others?

It's a pain.

My solution was to write a new proxy which is simple to configure can
which can do all kinds of magic with a single configuration in Maven.
You can find it on http://www.pdark.de/dsmp/ It's called "Dead Simple
Maven Proxy" and can do these things:

- Rewrite any URL Maven wants to download, so you can force all projects
to download from your closest mirror. You can even make sure that
artefacts from linked directories on the server will be downloaded just
once.

- You can intervene and make Maven see patched versions of any file, no
matter what is on any repository server out there

- You can allow and deny access per URL to make sure that Maven cannot
download things it shouldn't (for example a buggy version of a plugin or
SNAPSHOTs you don't want).

- The firewall in your workplace just won't let you download some artifact.

See http://www.pdark.de/dsmp/usage.html for a whole lot of use cases and
how to solve them with DSMP.

Note that this is a *proxy* and not a repository server. It's meant to
run alongside Archiva or any other repository server and *not* to
replace it.

Best Regards and a Happy New Year,

-- 
Aaron "Optimizer" Digulla a.k.a. Philmann Dark
"It's not the universe that's limited, it's our imagination.
Follow me and I'll show you something beyond the limits."
http://www.philmann-dark.de/