Best Software Repository and Artifacts Management Tools – CI/CD Tools Universe

First of all, let’s start by defining what an “artifact” actually is in relation to software development. An artifact is documentation or any deliverable associated with a project and is usually stored in the form of a large binary package. The artifact helps to describe the function, architecture, and design of the software being developed. Source code, meeting notes, workflow diagrams, data models, risk assessments, use cases, prototypes, and the compiled application can all be considered artifacts.

During the SDLC, there is typically a list drawn up during the planning stages that covers all of the required artifacts that must be produced. Once produced, these artifacts are then shared with the rest of the team in a shared drive or artifact repository. 

An artifact repository, which can also be called an artifacts management tool, is an application designed to store, version, and deploy artifacts for builds. There are three types of artifact repositories, which are listed below:

Local: A physical and locally-managed repository that artifacts be deployed into.

Remote: A caching proxy for a repository that is managed at a remote URL. You can remove artifacts from a remote repository, but you can’t deploy new artifacts into it.

Virtual: An aggregated repository that combines local and remote repositories under a common URL.

Theoretically, you could use a source control management (SCM) system to store artifacts, but it would be extremely inefficient because source control systems are designed to handle text-based files. Artifact repositories, on the other hand, are designed to store many types of files. This can include anything from binary files to docker containers.  

Lastly, there are now universal package repository managers (UPMs) that try to standardize the way enterprises treat all package types by giving users the ability to apply security and compliance metrics across all artifact types.  

What are Artifacts Management Tools?

Artifacts management tools, also known as artifact repositories, are used to store, organize and distribute artifacts (that is, binary files plus their metadata) in a single centralized location. This reduces the amount of time spent downloading dependencies from a public place. Artifact management tools also prevent inconsistencies by allowing development teams to find the right version of an artifact easily.

The main features that artifacts management tools must have are:

1. Versioning support: properly store metadata, such as when the artifact was built, what its version number is, etc.

2. Retention: allows you to set up criteria to retain important artifacts while automatically deleting irrelevant ones. 

3. User permissions: with this feature, you can control who can publish and download artifacts. 

4. Promotion: allows you to not only promote artifacts to specific channels, but also to move artifacts between them. 

5. License filtering: due to licensing and legal issues surrounding third party artifacts, license filtering is necessary to restrict artifacts so that only approved artifacts can be deployed. 

6. High availability: any downtime can significantly encumber development, so it’s important to have a redundant set of repository managers to maintain stability and performance.

Benefits of Artifacts Management Tools

Artifact repositories are essential for rapid releases, particularly in DevOps environments. Some of the advantages of using an artifact repository are:

1. Dependency management: a version-controlled common library can be shared by all development teams, bringing a new level of collaboration to the table.  

2. Efficient builds: artifacts are easier to access, which saves developer time. Instead of having to download artifacts from public repositories, artifacts can be cached locally once downloaded.

3. Release stability: binary artifacts and metadata don’t change after being published to a release repository, which helps to ensure predictable and repeatable builds. 

4. Audit: repositories can track versions, which is useful when standardizing software libraries and auditing the licenses of third-party components.

Best Artifacts management tools

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  Cloudsmith

  Cloudsmith is the only cloud-native package management platform for software engineers looking to set up a secure, cloud-native artifact repository in 60 seconds. Cloudsmith offers support for 28+ package formats, has 225 points of presence, and integrates with all of the tools you already use and love – from CI/CD to observability. When it comes to securing your software supply chain in the Cloud, we’ve got you covered.

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  Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)

  Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR) is a Docker container registry that allows developers to store, manage, and deploy Docker container images. Amazon ECR is integrated with Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), to simplify the development to production workflow. It has a variety of tests available at a local level when working with image development couplers for error testing and detection of anomalies.

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  ProGet

  ProGet can centralize your organization’s software applications and components to provide uniform access to developers and servers, no matter where they are in your network.  ProGet has features that use Universal Packages to uniformly distribute your applications and components, as well as Docker images for your containerized software. It also manages multiple versions of your packages when you are developing internal libraries that are used inside your company.

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  JFrog Artifactory

  As the world’s first universal repository, JFrog Artifactory is the mission-critical heart of the JFrog Platform functioning as the single source of truth for all packages, container images and Helm charts, as they move across the entire DevOps pipeline.

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  Packagecloud

  Packagecloud.io is a universal cloud-based package manager that enables users to securely store and distribute software packages in a reliable and scalable method without owning any infrastructure. Packagecloud offers support to package library storage and distribution for all major flavors of Linux, programming languages, and miscellaneous artifacts. It seamlessly integrates with all major build tools and CI/CD tools

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  Dist

  Dist provides highly available and super fast Docker Container Registries and Maven Repositories as a fully managed, cloud hosted service. Offering private, protected, and public repositories, Dist is the simplest way to distribute artifacts across your team, systems, and customers.

  Dist works with native tooling (such as Maven, Gradle, sbt, Docker, and Kubernetes) and offers role-based access control and access tokens for granular authorization and authentication. With a focus on reliability, performance, and security, Dist is perfect for small and large teams alike.

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  MyGet

  MyGet is a Universal Cloud Package Manager. MyGet provides private, cloud-based package management for NuGet, npm, Maven, Python and Ruby packages (with more on the way!) so that software teams can manage all their dependencies in one place and focus on shipping great software. Proxy upstream packages or upload your own internal builds, integrate with build pipelines, scan for vulnerabilities and license compliance, and more.

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  CloudRepo

  CloudRepo is a cloud-native artifact repository manager offering both public and private repositories, for Python and Maven repositories. CloudRepo allows high-performance software development teams to securely store and share artifacts for use in other builds and development processes.

  They describe their typical client as a leader or member of a small to medium team that can’t afford to spend time and resources installing, maintaining, or configuring their repository manager (ie. Artifactory or Nexus) and other build tools.

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  Yarn

  Yarn is an open source JavaScript package manager from Facebook, Google, and Tilde. Like all package managers, it automates the process of installing, updating, configuring, and removing pieces of software retrieved from a global registry. With Yarn, engineers still have access to the npm registry, but can install packages more quickly and manage dependencies consistently across machines or in secure offline environments.

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  npm

  npm is a package manager for JavaScript that serves as the default package manager for the JavaScript runtime environment Node.js. npm makes it easier for you to install and manage the tools that come with Node.js, such as Gulp and Grunt. It installs packages locally or globally and helps to manage dependencies. npm’s overarching goal is to automate dependency and package management, thereby saving time while making it easier to collaborate and share projects.

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  PyPI

  The Python Package Index (PyPI) is the official third-party public software repository for the Python programming language. PyPI helps users find, install, and distribute software developed and shared by the Python community. Pip, the Python package installation tool, is used to install files from PyPI.

  PyPI is maintained by an independent group of developers known as the Python Packaging Authority (PyPA), and is supported by the Python Packaging Working Group (PackagingWG).

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  Bower

  Bower is a browser package manager that manages frameworks, libraries, assets, and utilities, installs them, and makes sure they are up to date. It is a command line utility that must be installed with npm. Traditionally, web development projects would use npm to manage back-end dependencies and Bower to manage front-end dependencies. Bower runs over Git and is package-agnostic, meaning that packaged components can be made up of any type of asset.

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