Get Started with Repositories

This page explains the main tasks required to get you started working with repositories. Administrators can create repositories for a selected package type and assign them to a particular environment. After you define other basic and advanced settings, as required, you can optionally set up replication with a target repository.

Best Practices for Managing Repositories

JFrog recommends the following best practices for repository management:

• URL Considerations: Repository names should use lowercase characters and hyphens, and should avoid underscores or special characters that can cause issues with URL encoding in reverse proxies and load balancers.
• Performance vs. Manageability: While fewer and larger repositories are easier for admins, JFrog recommends using smaller repositories for better performance and to prevent cross-team interference.

Quick Setup Wizard

You can also use the Quick Setup wizard, which lets you create repositories for your selected package types in one go. You can create local, remote, and virtual repositories for each package type of your choosing. For more information, see Quick Repository Setup.

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.

To create repositories using Quick Setup:

1. In the user menu, select Quick Repository Creation.

2. Select one or more package types for which you want to create repositories.

   

3. Click Next.

4. Enter a prefix that will be added to the name of each repository. The maximum length is 20 characters.

   

5. Click Create.

   You have finished creating your repositories. You can continue to configure your clients and deploy artifacts. For more information, see Work with Package Management.

One Package Type Per Repository

When you create 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, JFrog Artifactory indexes artifacts and calculates the corresponding metadata for every package uploaded, which optimizes performance when resolving artifacts. 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.

The following table lists the maximum number of characters for each repository type.

• The repository key cannot contain the following characters: /, \\, :, |, ?, *, ", <, >.

• 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, or store installers, navigation files, audio files, and other file types.

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 local, remote, and virtual repositories are searched and resolved by ordering them in 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.

Frequently Asked Questions

This section provides answers to frequently asked questions.

Related Topics

• Repository Management
• View Repositories
• Federated Repositories
• Smart Remote Repositories
• Repository Layouts