Speeding up jenkins builds

Question

One of the most time consuming task Jenkins makes during every build is to download the artifacts into his local repository which it deletes.

While deleting my artifacts is fine. I don't understand the necessity in deleting 3rd party artifacts which were previously downloaded into it's local maven repository(.m2).

Is there any way to prevent Jenkins from deleting the local repository before build.

Thanks

Answer 1

You should install a Maven repository manager (MRM) like Sonatype Nexus, JFrog Artifactory or Apache Archiva and the downloads will be local to your network and very fast. Using a MRM is pretty much considered a necessity for any useful usage of Maven or any build tool with declarative dependency management since it allows you to cache artifacts as well as upload your own libraries and share them acros you developers as well as you CI builds.

If that is still not enough you can disable the private repository deletion per build or even use one shared repository per build, but that reduces the stability of the build since you are now mixing between builds and therefore introducing interdependencies.

Answer 2

While I agree with Manfred's recommendation to use a Maven repository manage I'd also recommend looking at how you manage the Maven local repository:

• Prevent Jenkins from Installing Artifact to Local Maven Repository
• When is it safe to delete the local Maven repository?
• Ivy, Ant, Jenkins - Is it good idea to to a <ivy:cleancache> on Jenkins builds?

Maven does not normally purge the local repository, I'm guessing you have a periodic task that does this.