Compare two servers¶

Staging drifted from production, or two Nexus instances should serve the same version. The compare is mirror --dry-run: the plan it prints is exactly the delta mirror would transfer, and nothing is written.

Is the content identical?¶

nxr mirror https://staging.example.com/repository/raw-main/1.4.0/ \
           https://prod.example.com/repository/raw-main/1.4.0/ --ls --dry-run

An empty plan: the two directories serve identical name-and-digest sets. A non-empty plan: every line names the artifact and the direction of the difference. The digest comparison is content-addressed: two servers agreeing on a sha256 agree on bytes, whatever wrote them.

The enumeration source is required, as everywhere in nxr: --ls walks the search API (the normal case for a real Nexus), --name/--names-from carry an explicit list when the search is dead or the compare is narrow:

printf '%s\n' app.jar deps.jar | nxr mirror SRC/1.4.0/ DST/1.4.0/ --names-from - --dry-run

Credentials per side, when the two servers authenticate differently:

nxr mirror SRC DST --ls --src-user staging-reader:pw --dst-user prod-reader:pw --dry-run

Compare reads only: --dry-run enumerates and digests, it never PUTs.

Then converge¶

Drop --dry-run and the same command transfers the difference: resumable, digest-verified, markers written after bytes. The rerun prints an empty plan: convergence is provable, not assumed.

Local versus remote¶

A local checkout against a server is diff: the same name-and-digest report, one side on disk.

nxr diff ./dist/1.4.0 https://prod.example.com/repository/raw-main/1.4.0/ --ls

An empty report: the local tree is exactly what the server serves. diff needs an enumeration source like the transfers: --ls for the search API, or --name/--names-from for an explicit list.

Compare without probing every object¶

diff --via search --ls takes the remote side from the search API's per-asset facts (name, digest, size), the same listing nxr service assets reads. One paged listing replaces the HEAD-and-sibling pair per name, so a big tree compares in O(pages) requests.

nxr diff ./dist/1.4.0 https://nexus.example.com/repository/raw-main/1.4.0/ --via search --ls

--prefix filters the search facts client-side. --name/--names-from are refused with --via search because the listing is the name source. With --fallback they become the degraded source: a server without the search API announces the refusal, then the report is rebuilt from the probe-based enumeration.

A searched asset that reports no digest counts as diverged, never as same. A search refusal is cannot enumerate, exit 1, never a false clean delta. The full rules live in the CLI reference.