Both prospects and customers often ask me why we need an artifact repository. Some think that as their favorite CI (Continuous Integration) server such as Jenkins already stores the output of each build, maybe there’s no need to add an artifact repository to their existing tool chain. Others simply wonder why they need such a repository at all.
In this blog post I’ll discuss why it’s essential for any continuous delivery and deployment project to version everything, and why artifact repositories such as Artifactory or Nexus are great choices for managing binary and other artifacts.