How does Archiva compare to Nexus?
There are a few similar questions already, but most are either focused on Nexus vs. Artifactory, or are a few years old.
I wanted to get a sense of where the two project stand these days. My impression is that Nexus is the best regarded repository manager, but I do tend to (slightly) prefer purely Free projects (hey, a little ideology never hurt anyone).
My use-case is pretty simple: I just want an on-demand dependency cache, with half a dozen of our own artifacts. I'll be using it with Ivy (not Maven), we don't do automated builds, and it will only be a couple of developers using it. So I'm also wondering if Nexus' more advanced features are something I won't need anyway.
Anything I should be aware of before making the choice?
Answer
Declaring bias: I'm the founder of the Archiva project.
I can assure you Archiva, and indeed all 3 projects, will satisfy the needs you've listed, and all have several more advanced features that you'll likely find useful as your environment progresses. They're all quick to try, so you can see what feels most natural for you.
As you've noted, Archiva is the most permissively licensed, and being at Apache is not tied to a particular corporate interest, if that's important to you.
With regard to Ivy, we have someone recently volunteering to write native support for Ivy-format repositories, which you might be interested in if it pans out.