Using Artifactory to Store Plugins

Overview

You can now configure JFrog Artifactory as a proxy for plugins that are currently hosted on the official Nexus repository.

This allows Artifactory to act as a mirror for your plugin repository in secure, airtight environments where Deploy cannot directly access the public plugin repository.

When configured, the Deploy Plugin Manager will fetch plugins from Artifactory instead of Nexus.

Setting Up JFrog Artifactory

Before configuring Deploy, you must set up JFrog Artifactory as a proxy for the Nexus plugin repository.

Prerequisites

Install JFrog Artifactory using Docker or another method. For installation instructions, see Install Artifactory Using Docker.

Create a Remote Repository

1. Log in to your JFrog Artifactory instance.
2. Navigate to Administration → Repositories → Remote.
3. Create a new remote repository with the following settings:

Field	Value
Repository Key	official-plugins
URL	https://nexus.xebialabs.com/nexus/content/repositories/official-plugins/
Username	official_public
Password	Your Nexus credentials

4. Save the repository configuration.

Verify the Repository

After creating the repository:

1. Click the Artifactory icon in the left sidebar.
2. Navigate to Artifacts.
3. The downloaded plugins will be stored in official-plugins-cache.

note

Plugins are downloaded on-demand when requested by Deploy. Once downloaded, they are automatically cached in the Artifactory Remote Repository cache and will be served locally for subsequent requests.

Configure Deploy

To configure JFrog Artifactory as the plugin repository, update the deploy-plugins.yaml file.

• Set the server-type property for your plugin server to artifactory (instead of nexus).
• Update the url, username, and password fields to match your Artifactory server’s credentials and URL.

This configuration ensures that the Plugin Manager seamlessly transitions to the new repository.

Example deploy-plugins.yaml

deploy:
  plugins:
    repositories:
      - enabled: true
        name: xld-official
        nexus-group-id: com.xebialabs.xldeploy.plugins
        nexus-metadata-artifact:
          artifact-id: xld-plugins-metadata
          group-id: com.xebialabs.xldeploy.plugins.metadata
        nexus-packaging-type: xldp
        nexus-repository-id: official-plugins
        repository-type: nexus-by-group-id
        server-ref: xebialabs-internal
        xl-component: xl-deploy
    servers:
      - name: xebialabs-internal
        server-type: artifactory
        url: http://artifactory.example.com:8082
        credentials:
          username: admin
          password: "{cipher}<your-encrypted-password>"

note

Replace <your-encrypted-password> with your own encrypted password. To generate an encrypted password, use the Deploy encryption utility. Never commit real credentials to documentation or version control.

In the above yaml change only the server-type, url and the credentials according to the server details and re-start the server.

Airtight Environment Use Case

When using Artifactory as a Nexus proxy:

• Create a Remote Repository in Artifactory pointing to:

https://plugins.xebialabs.com/nexus/content/groups/official-plugins/

• Enable caching so that once fetched, plugin artifacts are stored locally.

• Configure Deploy to point to the Artifactory remote repository using the example above.

Verification Run the following command to confirm that plugins are fetched from Artifactory:

xl pm list

If Artifactory is configured as a proxy, plugins will be cached locally after the first fetch.

For more information, see how to Migrate from Sonatype Nexus repository to JFrog Artifactory.