Adding remote repository in artifactory

Question

I had jcenter repository in my artifactory under remote repositories. Since some of the artifacts were missing such as qpid, I decided to delete jcenter and add it back. When I deleted the jcenter repository and added it back it didn't download any artifacts. The repository tree structure looks like this

Before removing the jcenter repository it was like this. Why it is not able to import any artifact? I can see the URL which is associated with it( http://jcenter.bintray.com/ ) has so many artifacts.

Answer 1

A remote repository in Artifactory serves as a caching proxy. This means that it downloads artifacts from the remote URL and cache them in Artifactory,
When you deleted the JCenter repository from Artifactory you deleted all cached artifacts.
After recreating the repository, your cache is empty. This is why, when browsing jcenter-cache, you see no artifacts. You can use the remote browsing capability in order to see which artifacts are available in the remote URL, but not currently caches
To re-populate the cache, you will need to download artifacts from the remote repository. Usually the best way to do it, is running your builds which are using this repository.

If the problem is that artifacts are not resolved at all from the remote repository, try the following:

• Make sure the repository is configured correctly in Artifactory. Use the "Test" button to make sure that the URL is correct and you can reach the remote URL.
• Check that your build tool is properly configured to use the repository you configured. One way of checking this, is by monitoring the Artifactory request log looking for requests from your build tool.

Deleting a repository is not a good practice when you are missing some dependencies. A better approach would be checking if they are available in the remote URL and downloading them into the cache. Artifactory has the option to perform a remote search in Bintray which can help you when looking for artifacts in JCenter.