qmake - What is the point of Artifactory or Nexus, and how might I use them? -

while investigating ci tools, i've found many installations of ci integrate artifact repositories sonatype nexus , jfrog artifactory.

those tools sound highly integrated maven. not use maven, nor compile java even. compile c++ using qt/qmake/make, , build works us. still investigating ci tools.

what point of using artifact repository?

is archiving nexus or artifactory (or archiva) supposed step in our make chain, or part of ci chain, or either?

how might make our "make" builds or perl/bash/batch scripts interact them?

an artifact repository has several purposes. main purpose have copy of maven central (or other maven repo) have faster download times , can use maven if internet down. since not using maven irrelevant you.

the second purpose store files in want use dependency can not download freely internet. buy them or them vendors , put them in repo. more applicable maven user , there dependency mechanism.

the third important purpose have central way can store releases. if build release v1.0 can upload such repository , clean way of naming in maven kinda easy know how find v1.0 , use other tools. write script downloads release wget , install on host.

most of time these repos have way of staging process. can store v1.0 in repo in staging. test , when fine promotes release repo can find , use it.

its simple integrate them maven projects , lot of other build tools frameworks has easy possiblity connect against ant ivy, groovy grape , on. because of naming schema there no limitation use bash or perl download/upload files it.

so if have releases or files should shared between projects , not have solution artefact repository starting point see how work.