CODEWITHSUNDEEP
artifactory
Nathan Williams
Nathan Williams

Reputation: 1013

Why does artifactory create a logical -cache repository for each remote repository?

I'm using artifactory (OSS 5.1.3) as a general build dependency cache. I've noticed that in the repository browser, for each remote repository there is a second entry with -cache appended. ex: "jcenter" and "jcenter-cache".

The -cache entries are created automatically. After I added a generic "gradle-distributions" repository to cache https://services.gradle.org/distributions/, I found that I had a "gradle-distributions-cache" repository in the tree as well. The -cache has a different icon, but it's not listed under any of the different repository types in the admin area, and it's not selectable as a source when defining a virtual repository.

Once I've downloaded an artifact once, I can access it through either the main repository name or the -cache name. But if I haven't downloaded something yet, then the -cache name will 404 (while the main name will go out and fetch it).

I couldn't find anything in the settings or documentation to explain the -cache repository. It's useful as a way of seeing what artifactory has already downloaded from the remote, but is there another explanation for it that I'm not apprehending? Is there a reason to point to one name or another in direct urls? (ex: gradle wrapper --gradle-version 3.4.1 --gradle-distribution-url http://localhost:8081/artifactory/gradle-distributions/gradle-3.4.1-bin.zip) This is mainly a curiosity question.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 483

Answers (1)

Dror Bereznitsky
Dror Bereznitsky

Reputation: 20376

The "-cahce" repositories are mentioned in the remote repositories configuration section.
The idea is that in some cases it is useful to directly access artifacts that are already stored in the cache (for example to avoid remote update checks).

Upvotes: 2

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