I installed Nexus on my Ubuntu server last weekend. So far it’s works great. Their single page documentation was very helpful during installation and configuration

I use Artifactory at my work place. And I’ve attempted using Archiva at home. But after installing Nexus, I prefer it over Artifactory and Archiva.

Here are a few reason why I prefer Nexus over Artifactory and Archiva:

  1. I can control (add/update/remove) repositories via the UI without having to remote into my linux box and edit an xml file like I would have to do when using Artifactory.
  2. Upgrading to a higher version of Nexus is simply a matter of unzipping the newer version, renaming the older version, and creating a soft link to the new version. I don’t have to bother exporting/importing data like in Artifactory.
  3. The downloaded artifacts are stored on the file system (under $NEXUS_HOME/runtime/work/nexus/storage), and well organized into “repository-named folders” such as “central” (artifact downloaded from http://repo1.maven.org). I can now back up the “storage” directory easily.
  4. Searching for artifacts using Nexus is fast. Searching with Artifactory was/is a pain – poor implementation of “google-like suggest” Ajax feature.
  5. Installing Archiva to run as a war file in Tomcat is a pain. Archiva expects you to create an “archiva” folder under the $CATALINA_HOME directory. What the heck???? And the documentation seems lacking.
  6. And oh, did I mention the slick UI ( Ext JS) that is provided by Nexus. It is far better than Artifactory, and Archiva!

Brian Fox, a committer of Nexus, discusses some architectural differences between Nexus and Artifactory here.

To be fair to Artifactory 2.x, here is a reply to the above post from the JFrog team, the creators of Artifactory.