How to upload an artifact to Artifactory / consume it in a build system (Gradle Maven Ant) where the artifact does not have an extension

Question

I have the following files which I would like to upload to Artifactory as a 9.8.0 versioned artifact.

NOTE: The first two files DO NOT have an extension (they are executable files i.e. if you open them/cat on it, you'll see junk characters).

Folder/files of a given version 9.8.0 in CVS is like:

com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/linux/gigainstall
com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/solaris/gigainstall
com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/win32/gigainstall.exe
com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/gigafile.dtd
com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/gigaanotherfile.dtd
com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/giga.jar
com.company.project/gigaproject/v9.8.0/giga.war

Uploading the above files which have an extension is very easy... You log in to Artifactory as an administrator/user which has access to deploy artifacts, click on "Deploy" tab, browse for the Artifactory file and once you select the file, click on "Upload" button.

Next you'll see a screen (like shown above). You'll tweak what you want in the fields on this page and once you click on "Deploy Artifact", you are done. All you have to make sure is you select the correct file.extension file while uploading and make sure the file extension is shown in the "Target Path" box correctly (with the version -x.x.x, etc.).

My questions:

Question 1: How do I upload an artifact which doesn't have an extension? It seems like Artifactory by default takes an artifact as a .jar extension. How can I upload the "gigainstall" artifact as shown in the folder/file structure above for both Linux and Solaris? I see I can use the artifact name as gigainstall-linux and gigainstall-solaris and differentiate it, but I am not sure how to tell Artifactory that this artifact doesn't have any extension.

I don't think the development team will start generating this artifact with a proper extension (as this artifact may be hard coded everywhere in other projects where they are currently getting it from CVS/SVN source control somewhere - which is itself a bad practice to store an artifact in a source control version tool).

Question 2: How would I tell a build system (for example, Gradle) to consume a non-extensioned artifact during, let's say, 'compile' task. In build.gradle under section dependencies { .. }, I will add something like as shown below, but I am not sure for non-extensioned files (the first two in the folder/file structure I mentioned above).

dependencies {
     //compile 'com.company.project:gigainstall-linux:9.8.0@'
     //compile 'com.company.project:gigainstall-linux:9.8.0@??????'
     //compile 'com.company.project:gigainstall-linux:9.8.0@""'
     //compile 'com.company.project:gigainstall-linux:9.8.0@"none"'
     //compile 'com.company.project:gigainstall-linux:9.8.0@"NULL_or_something"'

     // The following will easily get giga.jar version giga-9.8.0.jar from Artifactory repository
     compile 'com.company.project:giga:9.8.0'

     // The following will easily get giga.war
     compile 'com.company.project:giga:9.8.0@war'

     // Similarly, other extension based artifacts can be fetched from Artifactory
     compile 'com.company.project:gigafile:9.8.0@dtd'
     compile 'com.company.project:gigaanotherfile:9.8.0@dtd'
}

Answer 1

Answer 1 (will cover 2 as well in a different sense): Using Artifactory "Artifact Bundle" feature section under "Deploy" tab can do the TRICK for AT LEAST uploading the artifacts in a way we want, by creating a zip file first (containing the structure and artifacts in it) --OR you can upload the artifacts using/calling Artifactory REST API way.

High level idea:

Create a zip file called gigaproject.zip OR anyname.zip/.tar/compressed file which Artifactory can read. Inside the zip, create the structure - how these artifacts will be loaded to Artifactory

i.e. gigaproject.zip will contain the following folders/structure/files.

Case 1:

com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/linux/gigainstall
com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/solaris/gigainstall
com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/win32/gigainstall.exe
com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/gigafile.dtd
com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/gigaanotherfile.dtd
com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/giga.jar
com/company/project/gigaproject/9.8.0/giga.war

NOTE: In case 1 example, I didn't use any -x.x.x in the filename (i.e. I'm using plain and simple giga.jar instead of giga-9.8.0.jar).

The above Upload/Deploy will result the files (as shown in the following snapshot):

So, we have achieved what we wanted. Actually (visibly speaking yes), but not in a way Artifactory usually stores these artifacts (as they should -x.x.x version embedded in the file name and where artifact id should match the artifact filename). Now, if you want to consume the following in a Gradle build file, you CANNOT as first, you haven't uploaded the filename with -x.x.x version name in it, secondly, the artifact id in our case 1 tree was "gigaproject" (after com/company/project folder), so Gradle way of defining what artifact id and what artifact file name you want won't work.

compile 'com.company.project:gigaproject:CANNOTSAY_HOW_TO_GET_GIGA_JARorGIGAINSTALL_with_without_extension'

Conclusion: It's possible to upload any files (with/without extension in Artifactory) in any structure but it depends how your build system will consume it or will be able to consume it or not. - I deleted the structure I just created with case 1 .zip file from Artifactory repository to try next case#2 and deleted the .zip file I created.

Case 2:

Let's create an individual versioned file name for each artifact and also create structure in the format - how Artifactory actually stores them (an artifact as seen in a repository in a tree view) and create a .zip file containing that structure. Let's use the same "Artifact Bundle" feature to upload this .zip file to upload individual artifacts that we need in Artifactory - where artifact-id (second value which we mention while trying to consume it) would match the artifactfile name in Artifactory.

Folder/file structure for the .zip file:

com/company/project/gigainstall/9.8.0/gigainstall-9.8.0.linux
com/company/project/gigainstall/9.8.0/gigainstall-9.8.0.solaris
com/company/project/gigainstall/9.8.0/gigainstall-9.8.0.exe
com/company/project/gigafile/9.8.0/gigafile-9.8.0.dtd
com/company/project/gigaanotherfile/9.8.0/gigaanotherfile-9.8.0.dtd
com/company/project/giga/9.8.0/giga-9.8.0.jar
com/company/project/giga/9.8.0/giga-9.8.0.war

NOTE: This time, we'll be using the same "Artifact Bundle" feature and for similar files (gigainstall under both Linux/Solaris folders), I took the approach of creating gigainstall folder (containing gigainstall-9.8.0.linux and gigainstall-9.8.0.solaris file names) i.e. when we'll consume these artifacts in Gradle under dependencies { ... } section for compile, we'll use x.x.x@ way to fetch these artifacts from Artifactory.

OK, once "Artifact Bundle" Deploy/Upload was successfully complete, I got the following message.

Successfully deployed 7 artifacts from archive: gigaproject.zip (1 seconds).

Now, let's see how it looks like in Artifactory while searching for one of the artifact/in Tree view. You can see we have the files now in place, with filename-x.x.x.extension way so that I can consume them easily in Gradle.

In Gradle build file (build.gradle), I'll mention:

dependencies {
  compile "com.company.project:gigainstall:9.8.0@linux"
  compile "com.company.project:gigainstall:9.8.0@solaris"
  compile "com.company.project:gigainstall:9.8.0@linux"
  compile "com.company.project:giga:9.8.0
  compile "com.company.project:giga:9.8.0@war
  compile "com.company.project:gigafile:9.8.0@dtd
  compile "com.company.project:gigaanotherfile:9.8.0@dtd
}

OH OH!! - That didn't work, see below for Gradle error. Why? - Artifactory Bundle upload/deploy feature uploads a zip file content what you have in the .zip but it DOES NOT create a .pom file per artifact it deploys. Thus, making the Gradle build to fail. May be in Ant this might succeed. This occurred for each individual .jar/.war/.dtd/etc file. I'm just showing one error example.

While doing gradle clean build

Could not resolve all dependencies for configuration ':compile'.
> Could not resolve com.company.project:gigafile:0.0.0.
  Required by:
      com.company.project:ABCProjectWhichConsumesGIGAProjectArtifacts:1.64.0
   > Could not GET 'http://artifactoryserver:8081/artifactory/ext-snapshot-local/com/company/project/gigafile/0.0.0/gigafile-0.0.0.pom'. Received status code 409 from server: Conflict

Case 3: Let's take a simple approach (workaround but will save a lot of pain). Create gigaproject.zip file with the following structure, this approach takes - No x.x.x version value embedded in the individual artifact/filename in the folder/file structure. We will use "Single Artifact" approach (which will create the .pom for gigaproject.zip file automatically during the upload/deploy process provided by Artifactory). You'll still be able to get gigainstall file without needing any extension to its name using this approach. During the upload/deploy step, as you already have seen, you upload gigaproject.zip and artifactory will upload it to a given Target Repository as "gigaproject-x.x.x.zip" where x.x.x is 9.8.0 in our case. See the image snapshot below.

gigaproject/linux/gigainstall
gigaproject/solaris/gigainstall
gigaproject/win32/gigainstall.exe
gigaproject/gigafile.dtd
gigaproject/gigaanotherfile.dtd
gigaproject/gigaproject.zip
gigaproject/giga.jar
gigaproject/giga.war

Now, upload it in Artifactory using "Single Artifact" feature. Click "Deploy Artifact" once you tweak the values for GroupId, ArtifactId, Version, etc.

Once this is uploaded. You'll see in the zip artifact in the target repository (I took a bad example, usually this would be libs-snapshot-local or libs-release-local instead of ext-...), you'll be able to consume the ZIP artifact directly in Graddle:

dependencies {
   // This is the only line we need now.
   compile "com.company.project:gigaproject:9.8.0@zip"
}

Once the .zip is available to Gradle build system, now you can tell Gradle to unpack this .zip file somewhere in your build/workspace area where you can feed the actual(unpacked) files (gigainstall, .dtd, .jar, .war, etc.) to the build process/steps.

PS: Case# 1 and 2 would have worked for Ant I guess.

Answer 2: If you have uploaded a non-extensioned file in either way. Make sure you have manually created/uploaded its POM file as well (i.e. if I uploaded gigainstall-9.8.0 as an artifact under com/company/project/gigainstall/9.8.0/gigainstall-9.8.0, then at the same level, I have to/should create it's POM file (see a simple template .pom file for a custom jar artifact or while uploading an extensioned file via "Single Artifact" deploy, you'll see what POM Editor window shows you) and upload both so that Gradle won't error out saying no POM conflict/error. Ant might not need pom (I didn't check that).

Once it's there in Artifactory, the following line should work -- OR comment please if you find another way.

dependencies {
   // See nothing mentioned after - x.x.x@
   compile "com.company.package:gigainstall:9.8.0@"
}