Repository manager offers authentication and procurement capabilities, allowing developers to control software components and external dependencies Sonatype is introducing on Thursday an enhanced, commercial version of its Nexus repository manager for the open-source Apache Maven software build manager.Serving as a GUI for Maven, Nexus Professional adds capabilities for security, authentication, procurement management, and staging and promotion, Sonatype said. Software development teams can control software components and external dependencies in the software development cycle.[ For perspectives on code maintenance, see “Avoiding the high cost of bad code.” ] “What Maven offers is a repository that keeps track of all the components and their descriptions, and now it becomes very simple to build software from these components,” said Mark de Visser, Sonatype CEO. “What is needed once people become invested in Maven is a toolset that helps them manage the artifacts, the components that they put in the repository.”An LDAP authentication realm in Nexus Professional authenticates users against an LDAP server and maps roles to LDAP groups. Users also can augment LDAP group membership with Nexus-specific user-role mapping, according to Sonatype.Procurement capabilities provide control over what artifacts are allowed into a repository from external and internal sources. This provides an additional layer of security and management for code, Sonatype said. Staging enables development of a staging repository to manage artifact promotion from the staging repository to the release repository. This serves as a workflow for managing software releases.Features maintained from the open-source Nexus repository manager include a rich UI for managing repositories, role-based access control, a REST-based service architecture boosting integration patterns, and full indexing and searching. Nexus Professional is applicable to Java, Ruby, and Eclipse development. Microsoft Windows development capabilities are not yet supported, but the product is moving in that direction, DeVisser said. Available now, Nexus Professional costs $2,995 per server pear year. Software Development