dm Server 2.0.0.M6 is now available and can be downloaded from here.

This release follows quickly on the M5 release as we close in on the first 2.0.0 release candidate. This time we've focused very heavily on fixing outstanding defects and added just a handful of new features. Take a look at the M6 release notes for the full details of the defects that we've fixed and the features we've added. Please keep your feedback coming as comments on our blog, in the forums, and on the JIRA.

New and Noteworthy

Running dm Kernel and dm Server as a Service

The dm Kernel and dm Server can now be started as a service on windows and UNIX machines. To install the service on windows you need to edit the $HOME/bin/service/conf/wrapper.conf file to properly list the path of the kernel or server. Then you run the $HOME/bin/service/windows.bat install. There are other commands to be run and the dm Server documentation addresses the others.

UNIX users have it even easier as the $HOME/bin/service directory contains a number of init.d compatible scripts for various platforms.

Remote Repository Caching

The remote repository support that was added a while back is now much more efficient. Two kinds of caching are used to implement this performance improvement. First, Etag comparison is used when requesting indexes from a remote repository. This ensures that an index is downloaded only when it's changed. Second, hash comparison is used when requesting artifacts from a remote repository. The repository index format has been extended to embed a hash digest of each artifact. Those hashes are compared to any existing locally-cached copy of an artifact and if it matches, download is avoided.