November 2016 Summaries

Artifactory offers significant advantages in managing software builds by storing comprehensive build information, referred to as the "Bill of Materials," which allows for the full reproduction of any build, even if it has been deployed to production. This information includes artifact versions, dependencies, system properties, and environment variables. The JFrog CLI enhances this functionality by enabling users to collect and publish build information to Artifactory from any build tool. For example, when building a C++ DLL with a Makefile, users can download dependencies, specify build names and numbers, and upload build outputs to Artifactory, thereby associating all relevant data with the specific build. By using commands to collect environment variables and publish the bill-of-materials, users can access detailed build information in Artifactory for debugging purposes. The JFrog CLI also supports further functionalities like promoting and distributing builds through quality gates, culminating in distribution via Artifactory’s repositories to Bintray for end-user consumption, with more features to be discussed in future posts.

JFrog Mission Control's new Graphs feature provides valuable insights into the historical and current storage usage of Artifactory instances and repositories, enabling proactive management of storage resources. The "Top 5 Instances (Historical)" and "Top 5 Repositories (Historical)" graphs allow users to track storage trends over time, while the "Top 5 Instances (Current %)" graph highlights instances nearing their storage capacity, flagged in red if usage exceeds 80%. Additionally, the "Top 5 Repositories (Max. per Week)" graph identifies repositories with significant weekly storage peaks, aiding in identifying potential storage issues. By allowing users to drill down into specific data and zoom in on particular time periods, these graphs facilitate early intervention and planning, such as moving instances to cloud storage, implementing cleanup policies, or reallocating resources, to prevent storage shortages. Looking ahead, Mission Control aims to enhance these features with more detailed information and automated solutions.

JFrog, in collaboration with Google, is offering JFrog Artifactory Cloud hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) at no charge for qualified open source projects, expanding its cloud hosting options beyond AWS to include GCP. This initiative provides significant benefits to customers by allowing them to choose between two leading cloud platforms and enabling those already using Google Cloud services to co-locate their repositories with the same provider. The initiative also supports the open-source community by offering free access to JFrog Artifactory Cloud accounts on GCP, benefiting projects such as Groovy, Spring, and Grails with comprehensive features and scalability. For JFrog, this move aligns with their universal ethos by broadening customer choice and enriching their cloud service expertise through the integration with GCP's infrastructure, with detailed insights available in a guest post on Google's blog.

Conan.io, a C/C++ package manager, has been integrated into JFrog, marking a significant advancement in JFrog's universal approach to providing developers with the freedom to use any technology. Despite JFrog Artifactory supporting many popular programming languages, C and C++ were previously underserved due to the absence of a robust package management solution. Conan.io emerged as a promising tool for C/C++ development, offering true dependency management and addressing unique requirements such as conditional dependencies. The founders of Conan.io, Diego Rodriguez-Losada Gonzalez and Luis Martínez de Bartolomé, have partnered with JFrog to enhance Artifactory's capabilities, enabling a comprehensive management solution for C/C++ binaries. This collaboration aims to replace proprietary C/C++ development solutions with a powerful package manager integrated with an enterprise-grade repository manager, offering features like high availability, multisite development, and CI integration. JFrog anticipates that this alliance will revolutionize C/C++ development, allowing faster and more efficient software releases. An official announcement regarding Artifactory's support for Conan is forthcoming, encouraging developers to explore Conan.io in the meantime.

Artifactory has expanded its capabilities to support PHP Composer repositories, offering a significant advantage for developers managing dependencies and hosting internal packages. While tools like Toran Proxy and Satis provide basic support for PHP development, Artifactory distinguishes itself by acting as a universal artifact repository, supporting all major package formats, and integrating seamlessly with various build tools and CI servers. It provides advanced search options through its Artifactory Query Language (AQL), enabling complex queries and efficient artifact management. Artifactory also ensures robust global collaboration through multi-push replication, high availability with a redundant server architecture, and extensive storage capabilities, making it a superior choice for enterprise-grade repository management compared to alternatives like Satis or Toran Proxy. Additionally, it offers features such as remote and virtual repositories, user management, and integration with corporate authentication systems, creating a comprehensive solution for developers using PHP Composer.