Expected Checksums
Checksums in Resolver were historically used during transport, to ensure Artifact integrity. In addition, latest Resolver may use checksums in various other ways too, for example to ensure Artifact integrity during resolution.
The bare essence of all checksum uses in Resolver is “integrity validation”: Resolver calculates by various means the “calculated” checksum (for given payload), then obtains somehow the “expected” checksum (for same payload) and compares the two.
The “calculated” checksum is uninteresting from technical viewpoint, as it is calculated by standard means: either during payload streaming, or in worst case, from file already present on local file system (transport dependant).
Instead, this page covers all the “expected” checksum varieties.
Transport Checksum Strategies
Historically, the “obtain expected checksum” was implemented as simple request against Artifact checksum URL (Artifact URL appended by “.sha1”). This logic is still present in current Resolver, but is “decorated” and extended in multiple ways.
Resolver has broadened the “obtain checksum” step for “expected” checksum with two new strategies, so the three expected checksum kinds in transport are: “Provided”, “Remote Included” and “Remote External”. All these strategies provide the source of “expected” checksum, but it differs how Resolver obtains these.
The new Provided kind of expected checksums are provided to resolver by some alternative means, possibly ahead of any transport operation. There is an SPI extension point that users may implement, to have own ways to provide checksums to resolver. Alternatively, one may use Resolver out of the box implementation, that simply delegates “provided checksums” to “trusted checksums” (more about them later).
The new Remote Included checksums are in some way included by remote party, typically in their response. Since advent of modern Repository Managers, most of them already sends checksums (usually the “standard” SHA-1 and MD5) in their response headers. Moreover, Maven Central, and even Google Mirror of Maven Central sends them as well. By extracting these checksums from response, we can get hashes that were provided by remote repository along with its content.
Finally, the Remote External checksums are the classic checksums we all know: They are laid down
next to Artifact files, external in other words on the remote repository, according
to remote repository layout. To obtain Remote External checksum, new request again remote repository is
required. The order of requested checksums will follow the order given in aether.checksums.algorithms,
it asks for checksums in same order as the parameter contains algorithm names.
During single artifact retrieval, these strategies are executed in above specified order, and only if current strategy has “no answer”, the next strategy is attempted. Hence, if resolver is able to get “expected” checksum from Provided Checksum Source, the Remote Included and Remote External sources will not be consulted. Important implication: given that almost all MRMs and remote repositories (Maven Central, Google Mirror of Maven Central) send “standard” (SHA-1, MD5) checksums in their response, if any of the standard checksum are enabled, validation will be probably satisfied by “Remote Included” strategy and “Remote External” will be skipped.
The big win here is that by obtaining hashes using “Remote Included” and not by “Remote External” strategy, we can halve the count of HTTP requests to download an Artifact.
Remote Included Strategies
Note: Remote Included checksums work only with transport-http, they do NOT work with transport-wagon!
By using “Remote Included” checksum feature, we are able to halve the issued HTTP request count, since many repository services along Maven Central emits the reference checksums in the artifact response itself (as HTTP headers). Hence, we are able to get the artifact and reference “expected” checksum using only one HTTP round-trip.
Sonatype Nexus 2
Sonatype Nexus 2 uses SHA-1 hash to generate ETag header in “shielded” (à la Plexus Cipher)
way. Naturally, this means only SHA-1 is available in artifact response header.
Emitted by: Sonatype Nexus2 only.
Non-standard X- headers
Maven Central emits headers x-checksum-sha1 and x-checksum-md5 along with artifact response.
Google GCS on the other hand uses x-goog-meta-checksum-sha1 and x-goog-meta-checksum-md5
headers. Resolver will detect these and use their value.
Emitted by: Maven Central, GCS, some CDNs and probably more.
Trusted Checksums
All the “expected” checksums discussed above are transport bound, they are all about URLs, HTTP requests and responses, or require Transport related API elements.
Trusted checksums is a SPI component that is able to deliver “expected” checksums for given Artifact, without use of any transport API element. In other words, this API is not bound to transport.
Since they map almost on-to-one into transport “Provided Checksum” strategy, resolver provides implementation that delegates Provided to Trusted checksums (makes Provided and Trusted checksums equivalent, transport-wise).
But the biggest game changer of Trusted Checksums is their transport independence, that they can be utilized in places where there is no transport happening at all. One of such uses of Trusted Checksums is ArtifactResolver post-processing. This new functionality, at the cost of checksum calculation overhead, is able to validate all the resolved artifacts against Trusted Checksums, thus, making sure that all resolved artifacts are “validated” with some known (possibly even cryptographically strong) checksum provided by user. This new feature may become handy in cases when user does not trust the local repository, as it may be shared with some other unknown or even untrusted party.
The Trusted Checksums provide two source implementations out of the box.
Summary File Trusted Checksums Source
The summary file source uses single file that is in GNU coreutils compatible format: each line contains the hash and relative path of artifact from local repository basedir.
The file can be produced using common OS and GNU coreutils sha1sum command line tools,
and the same tools can be also used to “batch verify” the enlisted artifacts in local repository.
Each summary file contains information for single checksum algorithm, represented as summary file extension.
Sparse Directory Trusted Checksums Source
This source mimics Maven local repository layout, and stores checksums in similar layout as Maven local repository stores checksums in local repository.
Hare, just like Maven local repository, the sparse directory can contain multiple algorithm checksums, as they are coded in checksum file path (the extension).