How does Archiva compare to Nexus?

Question

There are a few similar questions already, but most are either focused on Nexus vs. Artifactory, or are a few years old.

I wanted to get a sense of where the two project stand these days. My impression is that Nexus is the best regarded repository manager, but I do tend to (slightly) prefer purely Free projects (hey, a little ideology never hurt anyone).

My use-case is pretty simple: I just want an on-demand dependency cache, with half a dozen of our own artifacts. I'll be using it with Ivy (not Maven), we don't do automated builds, and it will only be a couple of developers using it. So I'm also wondering if Nexus' more advanced features are something I won't need anyway.

Anything I should be aware of before making the choice?

Colporteur

Just an update since this is a few years old but there's a decent comparison matrix of all the binary repos in the space: binary-repositories-comparison.github.io – Hartley

The Matrix link from above is obsolete and gone as of 2021-03, but valuable real discussion can be found at #365275 and please check my answer below. – Manx

Answer 1

Declaring bias: I'm the founder of the Archiva project.

I can assure you Archiva, and indeed all 3 projects, will satisfy the needs you've listed, and all have several more advanced features that you'll likely find useful as your environment progresses. They're all quick to try, so you can see what feels most natural for you.

As you've noted, Archiva is the most permissively licensed, and being at Apache is not tied to a particular corporate interest, if that's important to you.

With regard to Ivy, we have someone recently volunteering to write native support for Ivy-format repositories, which you might be interested in if it pans out.

Illaudable

My last company used Archiva, my current company uses Nexus. Ivy can be used quite happily with both provided you use the "ibiblio" resolver correctly. – Gordy

Thanks, I'm leaning towards starting with Archiva and seeing if I run into any trouble. – Colporteur

Brett, we need to talk about the documentation for Archiva. I have been using it for a year now and it's still super confusing. – Sleuthhound

Answer 2

I have used Apache Archiva in the first place and I was pretty happy with it, because it fulfilled the needs we had in the company. OK, I had some little problems with installing it on my Debian 64bit machine, but nothing serious.

But after a while I tried Nexus and I was really blended by the nice and shiny user interface. OK, sometimes it's little bit overloaded, but in the end I ended up with running Nexus in the company. But from the functional point of view, you can use both.

Adames

Answer 3

We use Nexus Professional at my company and we have been very happy with it. We do use it for automated builds, and take advantage of a lot of the advanced features. I agree with you that the free version will probably fulfill your needs fine.

I don't have any experience with Archiva, but I am sure that would be a suitable choice as well.

Alliaceous

If only the documentation wasn't so freaking vague about nearly everything. – Sleuthhound

Answer 4

I'm just starting using nexus with ivy. I want to use nexus only to populate project repository with only required artifacts (ivy without transitive deps and nexus central repo in proxy mode). So when adding new dependency I can switch build to central repo via nexus, it will populate my project repository and next developers during building can use project repository directly (thus project repository will contain only required artifacts without confusing libraries which caused problems in my previous projects).

Nexus looks better choice than Artifactory because of using filesystem instead of database to keep repository.

About nexus vs apache archiva my quick tests show that nexus is more intuitive and is as well a bit faster.

Patrinapatriot

Answer 5

Archiva has many bugs, it never works if you only config it follow the offical guide(http://archiva.apache.org/docs/1.3.6/quick-start.html). You have to config it by guess.

Nexus is more easy than Archiva, but is ugly then Archiva.

For example, My OS is Windows 2003, Archiva 1.3.4, 1.3.6, 1.4, Archiva can download log4j.jar, junit.jar, but it never download javax\jms\jms\1.1\jms-1.1.jar.

Do not use Archiva, it is too hard to use. Nexus is very easy.

Limpet

Even if no tact was used, It's an opinion, why do you guys downvote ? Personally I need to agree with him, archiva does have a lot of bugs (i'm using 2.2.0), but fullfills the job. Since it's open source I hope it will improve and that I'll be happier and happier to use it – Septuple

Answer 6

You cana check this page for archiva vs nexus vs artifactory comparison https://binary-repositories-comparison.github.io/

Juvenal

Answer 7

There are comparisons of Artifactory vs Nexus vs other tools like Archiva and ProGet

https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/comparisons/archiva_vs_jfrog-artifactory_vs_sonatype-nexus-repository

https://www.praqma.com/stories/artifactory-nexus-proget/

and yet the 1st one is of 2018, it seems that Nexus gets more votes.

There's very good live detail discussion and valuable data at SO, too

Should we use Nexus or Artifactory for a Maven Repo?

Manx