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Alibaba Cloud DevOps:What is Packages?

Last Updated:Apr 23, 2025

Alibaba Cloud DevOps Packages is a software system designed to store, manage, and distribute software artifacts throughout the entire software development lifecycle. Packages provides an efficient, secure, and traceable method for managing various types of artifacts such as standard archives, library files, and binaries. Packages also provides services to developers and continuous integration (CI)/continuous deployment (CD) tools by using various artifact protocols.

Main features

  1. Artifact storage and version management

    • Centralized storage: provides a unified repository to store various types of artifacts.

    • Version control: supports version management and traceability of artifacts. You can clean up expired artifact versions by using configured cleanup policies.

  2. Metadata management

    Tags and categorization: organizes and manages artifacts by using metadata to facilitate artifact classification and queries.

  3. Access control and security

    Permission management: configures access permissions for users and teams to ensure the security of artifacts.

  4. Distribution and integration

    • Cache and proxy: provides the cache and proxy capabilities to reduce external dependency download time and enhance build efficiency.

    • Integration with Flow: serves as an artifact source for Alibaba Cloud DevOps Flow to meet CI/CD requirements, such as artifact promotion and code-free deployment.

Scenarios

  1. Software development and continuous integration

    In a software development and continuous integration scenario, a repository is used to store build outputs and dependency libraries to ensure that the correct versions are used in every build.

  2. Dependency management

    Various dependency libraries are managed to avoid redundant downloads and storage, which improves build efficiency.

  3. Software deployment and distribution

    The software packages are published and distributed by using repositories to ensure deployment is reliable and traceable.

Packages allows you to manage dependencies, build artifacts, and critical deployment information. Packages bridges continuous integration and continuous deployment by serving as the repository for CI outcomes and the source for CD materials. Packages also provides security for static analysis throughout development.

Repository types

Alibaba Cloud DevOps Packages supports: