NUTS
The Java Package Manager
About
NUTS stands for Network Updatable Things Services tool and is a portable package manager for java (mainly) that handles remote artifacts, installs these artifacts to the current machine and executes such artifacts on need. nuts solves the fatjar problem delegating the dependency resolution to the time when the application is to be executed and simplifies the packaging process while being transparent to the build process. Actually, nuts uses maven pom descriptors to resolve dependencies when the artifact is installed on the target machine, and it can use also other types of descriptors for other types of packages.
NUTS artifacts
nuts artifacts are stored into repositories. A repository may be local for storing local artifacts or remote for accessing remote artifacts (good examples are remote maven repositories). It may also be a proxy repository so that remote artifacts are fetched and cached locally to save network resources.
Swiss army knife tool
nuts is a swiss army knife tool as it acts like (and supports) maven build tool to have an abstract view of the artifacts dependency and like npm and pip language package managers to install and uninstall artifacts allowing multiple versions of the very same artifact to be installed. nuts is not exclusive for Java/Scala/Kotlin and other Java Platform Languages, by design it supports multiple artifact formats other than jars and wars and is able to select the appropriate artifacts and dependencies according to the current OS, architecture and even Desktop Environment.
Main features
No Fat Jar
Developers, forget about big jars, uber jars and fats jars hassle. You do not need to bother about packaging your dependencies along with your application.
Any application, All applications
install any java application with a simple `nuts install your-package`. dependencies are shared across all installed applications and you still can install multiple versions of the same application.
Automate your operations
Take advantage of the Nuts toolbox that offers GNU binutils equivalent tools (bash,ls, cp, and more), and extend them to support json and xml outputs to help automation.
Main FAQs
What does Nuts mean and why ?
NUTS stands for "Network Updatable Things Services". It helps managing things (artifacts of any type, not only java). The Name also helps depicting another idea : nuts is a good companion and complement to Maven tool. The word maven (MAY-vin), from Yiddish, means a super-enthusiastic expert/fan/connoisseur/Wizard. And where wizards are, fools and nuts must be. nuts is the foolish tool to support the deployment and not the build. Hence the name.
Does nuts support only jar packaging ?
Not only. nuts supports all types of packaging, particularly, those supported by maven. This includes pom , jar , maven-plugin , ejb , war , ear , rar. nuts is also intended to support any "thing" including "exe" ,"dll", "so", "zip" files, etc. nuts differs from maven as it defines other properties to the artifact descriptor (aka pom in maven) : os (operating system), arch (hardware architecture), osdist (relevant for linux for instance : opensuse, ubuntu) and platform (relevant to vm platforms like java vm, dotnet clr, etc). Such properties are queried to download the most appropriate binaries for the the current environment.
Why not maven ?
or, "Why do we need a package manager for Java. Isn't Maven enough?". Please read Nuts Introduction, Why and What for. In few words maven manages dependencies to build applications, nuts uses maven dependencies system to install applications.
How can I make my application "Nuts aware" ?
If by nuts aware you mean that you would download your application and run it using nuts, then you just need to create the application using maven and deploy your application to the public maven central. Nothing really special is to be done from your side. You do not have to use plugins like 'maven-assembly-plugin' and 'maven-shade-plugin' to include your dependencies. Or, you can also use NAF (nuts Application Framework) to make your application full featured "Nuts aware" application.
Nuts News
  • Nuts 0.8.3 is released
    Nuts embraces Docusaurus

    We are thrilled to announce v0.8.3 release of #nuts, the open source #java package manager intended to be #devops friendly. Look at this location (at github repo) for a small intro

    /documentation/presentations/2021-a/nuts-presentation-2021-a.pdf
    Be the first to comment!
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