How to access a secured Nexus with sbt?

If SBT launcher is failing to download a new version of SBT from your proxy, and that ~/.sbt/boot/update.log is showing that you're getting 401 authentication errors, you can use the environment variable SBT_CREDENTIALS to specify where the ivy credential file is.

Either of these should work and download the new sbt version:

1. SBT_CREDENTIALS='/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.ivy2/.credentials' sbt
2. Putting export SBT_CREDENTIALS="/home/YOUR_USER_NAME/.ivy2/.credentials" in your .bashrc (or .zshrc), start a new shell session and then run sbt

(You'll need have the ~/.ivy2/.credentials file setup like other answers here has shown)

Source: https://github.com/sbt/sbt/commit/96e5a7957c830430f85b6b89d7bbe07824ebfc4b

Here's what I did (sbt 0.13 + artifactory - setup should be similar for nexus):

1) Edited the file ~/.sbt/repositories as specified here: http://www.scala-sbt.org/0.13.0/docs/Detailed-Topics/Proxy-Repositories.html

[repositories]
  local
  my-ivy-proxy-releases: http://repo.company.com/ivy-releases/, [organization]/[module]/(scala_[scalaVersion]/)(sbt_[sbtVersion]/)[revision]/[type]s/[artifact](-[classifier]).[ext]
  my-maven-proxy-releases: http://repo.company.com/maven-releases/

2) Locked down my artifactory to disable anonymous access.

3) Created a credentials file in ~/.sbt/.credentials

realm=Artifactory Realm
host=artifactory.mycompany.com
user=username
password=password

4) Created a file under ~/.sbt/0.13/plugins/credentials.sbt that wires up the default credentials

credentials += Credentials(Path.userHome / ".sbt" / ".credentials")

Now when my project loads sbt hits artifactory like normal.

The reason I did it this way is to keep the repository definitions, etc, out of the project files to enable teams to have flexibility (they can set up an internal server to serve in-progress artifacts, etc).

-Austen

UPDATE: This answer does not work in recent sbt versions - see Austen's answer instead.

Alright I finally got this sorted out.

snapshotsName can be anything. realm in .credentials must be the HTTP Authentication realm that shows up when trying to hit the URL of the repository (nexus in my case). realm is also the first parameter of Credentials.add. So that line should have been

Credentials.add("Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager", "nexusHostIp", "nexususername", "nexuspassword")

The host name is just the ip or DNS name. So in .credentials host is just nexusHostIp without the port number.

So the working Project configuration is:

val snapshotsName = "Repository Snapshots"
val snapshotsUrl = new java.net.URL("http://nexusHostIp:8081/nexus/content/repositories/snapshots")
val snapshotsPattern = "[organisation]/[module]/[revision]-SNAPSHOT/[artifact]-[revision](-[timestamp]).[ext]"
val snapshots = Resolver.url(snapshotsName, snapshotsUrl)(Patterns(snapshotsPattern))
Credentials(Path.userHome / ".ivy2" / ".credentials", log)

val dep = "group" % "artifact" % "0.0.1" extra("timestamp" -> "20101202.195418-3")

With a .credentials file that looks like:

realm=Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager
host=nexusHostIp
user=nexususername
password=nexuspassword

Where "Sonatype Nexus Repository Manager" is the HTTP Authentication realm.

Following the SBT Documetation:

There are two ways to specify credentials for such a repository:

Inline

credentials += Credentials("Some Nexus Repository Manager", "my.artifact.repo.net", "admin", "password123")

External File

credentials += Credentials(Path.userHome / ".ivy2" / ".credentials")

The .credentials file is a properties file with keys realm, host, user, and password. For example:

realm=Some Nexus Repository Manager
host=my.artifact.repo.net
user=admin
password=password123