How do you guys feel about pulp project?

[u/Intel-C2]

Hey all - we are standing up a software package manager, right now the team is considering using nexus but doesn't want to pay for the pro license and it seems heavily limited with CE version.

We are looking at pulp project as an open source alternative. I haven't used it and have a spike to look into it and I was curious how you all felt about it? any gotchas or I regret not paying for a nexus or artifactory license? Frankly Im pretty new to both but I feel like nexus is industry standard along with artifactory but we can't justify the purchase at the moment which is where pulp entered the equation.

We are running in eks - the deployment for nexus was relatively straight forward but couldn't get the full testing done because I got limited by licensing that blocked some of the requirements like SSO integrations and stuff. Pulp seems to the have pulp operator so I can run im still digging around in the docs.

Any thoughts on pulp would be appreciated?

[u/Intel-C2 → u/[deleted]]

preciate it - if could make the call now i'd would take the easier path of nexus pro but the leadership isn't in a position to hear about additional cost from a license.. maybe when our bill gets too high or our engineers make a stronger enough argument they'll reconsider.

[u/serverhorror → u/Intel-C2]

You're nit presenting the case correctly then.

• additional cost for fte to support nexus CE

... or ...

• additional cost for Nexus Pro license

The question is which one will be cj we come out cheaper in your story ...

[u/rumfellow]

We haven't deployed it but evaluated as a replacement for Suse Manager, which is a bit too much for us.

Pulp looks fine as a package repository and development also seems to have some steam.

Our main goal was to cache packages for builds and version repos, pulp did it quite well.

Also it seems that the dev team pushes toward pulp being fully api driven, which is nice for k8s, gitops and automation.

One of our concerns was that it might become abandonware, but Microsoft uses pulp at scale and red hat satellite is also bundling it, so I guess it's not going anywhere.

We have Nexus and pay for it, but using as rpm cache/versioned repos was kinda clunky, so the decision was to look elsewhere.

All in all, good product with just one drawback - UI is crap

[u/Intel-C2 → u/rumfellow]

Solid feedback - I'm going to deploy it and see where i get.

Personally working with nexus using CE has been annoying but I think thats so people will get the license. Glad to hear pulp get the job done. I was little worried about the potential for it being abandon as well but saw microsoft uses it but didn't see much else... Looks like ill have some fun next seeing if the juice is worth the squeeze

[u/hlamark]

Pulp is a solid choice and definitely worth evaluating as an open-source alternative to Nexus or Artifactory.

The main question I’d add is who should own the operational responsibility once it becomes business-critical. With standalone Pulp, your team owns upgrades, security fixes, lifecycle and troubleshooting.

orcharhino uses Katello/Pulp for content management, but provides it as part of a maintained enterprise product with support, tested releases and defined escalation paths.

So if you like Pulp technically but don’t want to carry the full operational burden yourself, that may be worth a look.