Wintersleep 99.0-does-not-exist Maven Repo Server

This is a lightweight Maven repository server that only serves empty jar files and pom.xml files, for artifacts with version 99.0-does-not-exist. It is inspired by:

http://day-to-day-stuff.blogspot.com/2007/10/announcement-version-99-does-not-exist.html

Requests for artifacts with a different version than 99.0-does-not-exist receive an HTTP 404 Not Found error.

This repository server not only serves empty "main" jar files, but also:

• A minimal but valid pom.xml

• That pom.xml file is also included in the main jar file.

• javadocs and sources jar files, to avoid warnings when downloading those artifacts.

• MD5 and SHA1 checksums of the above files, again to avoid warnings.

Running the Server

This repository server is very minimal: it does not require any dependencies at all, as it is based on the mini web server that is built into the JDK (com.sun.net.httpserver).

It can be started like this:

java -jar wintersleep-nnzero-1.3.jar

That will listen on all network interfaces on port 9999. It accepts two optional arguments (bind address and port). For example to listen only on the IPv4 loopback interface and on a different port, run as:

java -jar wintersleep-nnzero-1.3.jar 127.0.0.1 8888

Logging can be enabled with java.util.logging logging properties, for example:

java -Djava.util.logging.config.file=config/logging.properties -jar wintersleep-nnzero-0.1.0.jar

99.0-does-not-exist

99.0-does-not-exist is a bad version number in one corner-case: if anybody uses a completely open-ended version range (such as [1.0.0,)), they (or their dependees) might end up with an empty jar file.

However, completely open-ended version numbers are generally a bad idea. Ending up with an empty jar file then forces you to fix the version number (in dependency management for instance).