Deploying large releases into Maven Central

1. Do artifacts ever expire on the Maven Central Repository?
2. Is there a size limit to how big each artifact can be?

I ask because some artifacts can get very big and I am concerned that this may cause problems down the line.

I'll give you a simple example. My library depends on the Boost C++ library. Boost starts out with 241MB of sources (75MB compressed). When you compile it, you end up with 2.78GB of binaries (200MB compressed) per compiler/platform combination (i.e. Visual Studio 2010, Windows, 32-bit). You then have to multiply that number by the number of platforms you want to support.

On the one hand, I don't want users building Boost themselves because it is a very painful and lengthy process. On the other hand, I get the feeling that uploading GB of artifacts per release is not the right way to go ;)

My library only depends on a very small subset of of Boost so technically speaking I could upload just that subset (at a cost of approximately 10MB per platform). I am concerned about what will happen long-term. What happens if more people begin using Boost and each one uploads the subset that they depend on...?

See http://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost-binaries/1.44.0/ for an example of how Boost modules can be split up. As you can see, individual modules are quite small.

A similar topic has come up b开发者_如何学Pythonefore: http://maven.40175.n5.nabble.com/Best-practice-re-releasing-large-assembly-artifacts-td3250739.html but in my case I am not trying to deploy assemblies into central. I am trying to deploy individual artifacts that happen to be very large.

Let me know what you think.

I ended up posting my artifact as-is. No one has complained yet.

Sign up for the user list linked at the end of this document and then lets discuss it. There aren't hard and fast rules for what we allow into Central, but I'd like to gather more information to help you build things in the most efficient and community friendly way.

Things in Central never expire, and there isn't a specific size limit, although we may look closely at things that appear to be over sized.