I was on a project to improve an application deployment process that used zip files for packaging the applications. Zips are good. They allow you to package and compress files into one bit sized file, but there is so much more to be had with a dedicated package solution.  Maven, gem, wheel, npm, cpan, rpm, deb, nuget, chocolatey, yum… the list goes on and with so many options to provide an improved package for deployment its hard to justify using plain old zips.

Since this was a .Net project I focused on NuGet. NuGet is itself a zip file, but a zip on steroids. Zip provides the compression and NuGet adds additional meta data and functionality.

1. Standard package meta data and file layout.
2. Versioning ala SemVer.org.
3. Package manager to control install, upgrade, and uninstall.
4. Dependency management.
5. Having a package manage file deployment means you have a repeatable process as opposed to manual where one missed file can kill you. Also, when I deploy the same package multiple times the system is in the same state after each deployment, idempotent.

Enough of the sales pitch. Actually, one problem that I had with using NuGet alone was no easy way to validate the package through checksum. So, in addition to NuGet, using a dedicated artifact repository solution like Artifactory gives an added layer of comfort. A good paper, although biased, on Artifactory can be found here.

Happy Packaging!