14.3. How a Maven Proxy Resolves Artifacts

A Maven proxy is essentially a Web server that is configured to behave like a standard Maven repository server. Remember that the purpose of the Maven proxy is to serve artifacts to remote HTTP clients, not to install artifacts locally. So, although Maven proxy configuration properties have similar names to the managed container case, they ultimately serve quite a different purpose.

The Fabric8 Maven proxy server is a HTTP server, implemented as a servlet inside the container's default Jetty container. Hence, the Maven proxy server shares the same port number, 8181, as many of the other Karaf container services. On a given host, Host, the Maven proxy can be accessed through the following URL:

http://Host:8181/maven/download

http://Host:8181/maven/download

The Fabric8 Maven proxy server is configured by setting properties from the io.fabric8.maven.proxy PID. By default, some of these properties are set in the default profile and some are set in the fabric profile.

The io.fabric8.maven bundle layer offers similar functionality to the Pax URL Aether component (from a standalone Karaf container).

The io.fabric8.maven bundle is configured by setting properties from the io.fabric8.maven PID and these properties are normally set in the default profile (recommended).

Figure 14.3, “Maven Proxy Serving an Artifact” shows how a Maven proxy processes a HTTP download request, by locating the requested Maven artifact and then returning it to the client.

The steps to serve the required Maven artifacts are, as follows: