Get Started with Repositories

This page hosts main tasks required to get you started working with repositories.

Manage Repositories

To create and manage repositories, go to Repositories under the Administration module.

Administrators can create repositories for a selected package type and assign them to a particular environment. After defining other basic and advanced settings, as required, they can optionally set up replication with a target repository.

Quick Setup Wizard

You can also use the Quick Setup wizard, which enables you to create repositories for your selected package types in one go. With a couple of simple steps, you can create local, remote, and virtual repositories for each package type of your choosing. For more information, see the section Quick Repository Setup below.

Uploading Non-Conformant Content

Repositories of each package type have built-in logic for parsing metadata, creating index files, and optimizing performance for packages of that specific type. Uploading non-conformant content, such as images, text files, and other resources that are not wrapped in the proper package format can impact indexing and reduce performance. Therefore, it is strongly recommended to upload generic content to a Generic repository.

Quick Repository Setup

Use Quick Setup to easily create local, remote, and virtual repositories for your selected package types.

1. Click your login name on the top right-hand corner and select Quick Repository Creation.

2. Select one or more package types for which you want to create repositories and then click Next.

   

3. Enter a prefix that will be added to the name of each repository (maximum length is 20 characters).

   

4. Click Create.

   You have completed creating your repositories, you can continue to configure your clients, and deploy artifacts, as described in Work with Package Management.

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Learn More

• Best practices for structuring and naming JFrog repositories
• 5 special JFrog repositories you should know about

One Package Type Per Repository

When creating a repository, you must select a specific package type; this is a fundamental characteristic of the repository that cannot be changed later. Once the repository type is set, the system will index artifacts and calculate the corresponding metadata for every package uploaded, which optimizes performance when resolving artifacts. Note that virtual repositories can only include repositories of the same type.

Uploading an Incorrect Package Type

While Artifactory does not prevent you from uploading a package of the wrong type to a repository, JFrog strongly recommends maintaining consistency between the repository type and the packages you upload. If you upload packages of the wrong type to a repository, Artifactory will not index the package or update the metadata for the repository.

Repository Naming Rules and Limitations

You must adhere to the following rules and limitations when naming repositories:

• The name (Repository Key) cannot be empty.

• The Repository Key cannot be identical to another Repository Key in your Artifactory instance

• Maximum number of permitted characters:

  • For local, federated, and virtual repositories = 64
  • For remote repositories = 58

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Important

The limit for Docker, OCI, and Helm OCI local and federated repositories is 63 characters. For more details about the limitations of these package types on Cloud platforms, see Docker Limitations in Artifactory.

• The Repository Key cannot contain the following characters: /, \\, :, |, ?, *, ", <, >

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Important

In addition, the names of Docker, OCI, and Helm OCI repositories cannot contain uppercase letters or an underscore (_).

• The Repository Key cannot consist of the following:

  • .
  • ..
  • &
  • Jfrog-usage-logs
  • Jfrog-billing-logs
  • Jfrog-logs
  • artifactory-build-info
  • artifactory-pipe-info
  • Auto-trashcan
  • jfrog-support-bundle
  • _intransit
  • Artifactory-edge-uploads
  • release-bundles

• The Repository Key cannot start with the following:

  • Jfrog-system-reserved
  • Jfrog-artifactory-system

• The Repository Key cannot end with the following:

  • -cache

For more information, see the whitepaper Best Practices For Structuring and Naming Artifactory Repositories.

Generic Repositories

You can define a repository as Generic, where you can upload packages of any type. Generic repositories are useful when you want to proxy unsupported package types, store installers, navigation files, audio files, etc.

Since they are not specific to a particular package type, Generic repositories do not maintain separate package indexes. To use a client associated with a specific package type (e.g. yum, gem), you should create a matching repository.

General Resolution Order

You can set the order in which repositories of each type (local, remote, and virtual) are searched and resolved by simply ordering them accordingly within the corresponding section of the Configure Repositories page. To set the order, add the repositories to the list of selected repositories in the order in which they should be searched to resolve artifacts.

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Note

The order in which repositories are searched is also affected by additional factors such as security privileges, include/exclude patterns, and policies for handling snapshots and releases.