What's Assets in the new Nexus 3

Question

In the new Nexus 3, under Browse, there are Assets and Components. What's the definition of the Assets?

I can't find it in the doc:http://books.sonatype.com/nexus-book/3.0/reference/index.html

Answer 1

A component in Nexus 3 is an installable unit which is delineated by it's coordinates (such as artifact ID + version number). In some repository formats there is one file per component, but in others there are multiple files per component. So the UI allows browsing repositories by either components or assets (files).

I'll submit an issue in our bug tracker to have the book provide an full explanation of components vs. assets.

Answer 2

Quoting from Nexus Book:

Component

• Is a resource like a library or a framework that is used as part of your software application at run-time, integration or unit test execution time or required as part of your build process. It could be an entire application or a static resource like an image.

Assets

• Assets are the material addition to all this metadata.

Example

For a typical JAR component in a Maven repository which is defined at least by the POM and the JAR files:

Components are -

example-project.pom.sha1
example-project.pom.md5
example-project.pom

example-project.jar.sha1
example-project.jar.md5
example-project.jar

example-project-sources.jar.sha1
example-project-sources.jar.md5
example-project-sources.jar

example-project-javadoc.jar.sha1
example-project-javadoc.jar.md5
example-project-javadoc.jar 

Assets are -

example-project.pom.sha1
example-project.pom.md5
example-project.pom

example-project.jar.sha1
example-project.jar.md5
example-project.jar

example-project-sources.jar.sha1
example-project-sources.jar.md5
example-project-sources.jar

example-project-javadoc.jar.sha1
example-project-javadoc.jar.md5
example-project-javadoc.jar

maven-metadata.xml
maven-metadata.xml.md5
maven-metadata.xml.sha1