A well organized and well maintained artifact repository is an important step to have simple and reliable builds and releases. A basic setup using a web server and a directory tree is no-longer sufficient for many organizations. As the organization's Maven repository grows, a fully featured Maven repository manager can provide things like staging, validation, and simpler build configuration.

This session will discuss the challenges faced when creating a Maven repository infrastructure for your organization. The basic concepts of a Maven repository will be introduced, followed by a discussion with several examples of how Maven is configured to use repositories. The limitations and potential problems of a basic setup will be discussed, including how these problems might be solved using a Maven repository manager. The JBoss Community Maven repository will be examined including the problems with the previous setup, how the repositories were rebuilt to address these problems, and what are the plans for the future of the JBoss repository.

The goal of this session is to explain the basic concepts of Maven repositories and repository managers, compare the advantages and disadvantages of several possible repository configurations, and provide enough information so that you can begin desiging your own repository infrastructure.

It is recommended that attendees have at least a basic understanding of Maven and a general knowledge of Java and related software.