Built by Maven

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. This saves one HTTP round-trip, as we got both, content and checksums in one response.

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 HTTP request against remote repository is required. The order of requested checksums will follow the order given in layout configuration, asking 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.

Related configuration keys:

  • aether.layout.maven2.checksumAlgorithms A comma-separated list of checksum algorithms. Order is important, as transport will ask for those in specified order (default is “SHA-1,MD5”), and first received and matched causes integrity validation algorithm to stop.

Note: Since Maven 3.9.x you can use expression ${session.rootDirectory}/.mvn/checksums/ to store checksums along with sources as session.rootDirectory will become an absolute path pointing to the root directory of your project (where usually the .mvn directory is).

Provided Checksums

There is a Resolver SPI ProvidedChecksumsSource that makes possible to feed Provided Checksums to Resolver ahead of actual transport. These checksums are used during transport only to verify transported payload (artifacts) integrity. Hence, Provided checksums are NOT usable to verify already cached artifacts integrity (unless you build with empty repository, of course, that forces all of your artifact go through transport).

Resolver out of the box provides one SPI implementation: one that simply delegates to “trusted checksums”.

Remote Included Checksums

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.

Related configuration keys:

  • aether.connector.basic.smartChecksums to enable or disable Remote Included checksums.

The Remote Included checksums support several “strategies” to extract checksums from HTTP response header.

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 all these and use their value.

Emitted by: Maven Central, GCS, some CDNs and probably more.

Remote External checksums

These are the “classic” checksums existing since Maven 1. They are laid on layout in the remote repository, next to the payload file (i.e. “lib.jar” and checksum “lib.jar.sha1”). While they are the oldest kind of Resolver checksums, their shortcoming is that most often only SHA-1 and MD5 are produced. Basically, consumer is tied to those checksum algorithms only, that are provided by remote repository. Similarly, given both, the payload and the checksum comes from same origin, unless the origin is trusted (like Maven Central is), it may be seen as a risk.

Trusted Checksums

All the “expected” checksums discussed above are used in transport only, they are all about URLs, HTTP requests and responses, or require Transport related API elements.

TrustedChecksumsSource 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, but is generic.

Since they map almost one-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 cannot trust the local repository, as it may be shared with some other unknown or even untrusted parties.

Moreover, using Resolver Trusted Checksum post-processor, one can “record” the checksums, for example when executed in a known “pristine” and safe environment, and reuse the produced checksum to distribute within organization.

The Trusted Checksums provide two source implementations out of the box.

Related configuration keys:

  • aether.trustedChecksumsSource.*
  • aether.artifactResolver.postProcessor.trustedChecksums.*

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.

Here, just like Maven local repository, the sparse directory can contain multiple algorithm checksums, as they are coded in checksum file path (the extension).