DEV Community: devitway The latest articles on DEV Community by devitway (@devitway). https://dev.to/devitway https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3822872%2F663e1d90-f2ba-4a00-bccc-af3c74e11584.jpeg DEV Community: devitway https://dev.to/devitway en Why I replaced Nexus with a 32MB binary devitway Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:15:25 +0000 https://dev.to/devitway/why-i-replaced-nexus-with-a-32mb-binary-470f https://dev.to/devitway/why-i-replaced-nexus-with-a-32mb-binary-470f <p>Every artifact registry I've used is bloated. Nexus wants 4GB RAM. Artifactory is even heavier. I just want to store Docker images and Maven JARs.<br> So I built <strong>NORA</strong> — a multi-protocol artifact registry in Rust.</p> <h2> The numbers </h2> <p><strong>NORA</strong>: Startup &lt;3s, RAM &lt;100MB, Image 32MB, MIT license</p> <p><strong>Nexus</strong>: Startup 30-60s, RAM 2-4GB, Image 600MB+, EPL/Commercial</p> <p><strong>Artifactory</strong>: Startup 30-60s, RAM 2-4GB, Image 1GB+, Commercial</p> <h2> What it does </h2> <p>One binary handles all of these:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Docker Registry v2</strong> — full OCI spec, pull-through cache for Docker Hub/GHCR</li> <li> <strong>Maven</strong> — host JARs + proxy to Maven Central</li> <li> <strong>npm</strong> — private packages + proxy to npmjs.org</li> <li> <strong>Cargo</strong> — Rust crates hosting</li> <li> <strong>PyPI</strong> — pip-compatible index</li> </ul> <h2> Try it in 10 seconds </h2> <div class="highlight js-code-highlight"> <pre class="highlight shell"><code>docker run <span class="nt">-p</span> 4000:4000 ghcr.io/getnora-io/nora:latest </code></pre> </div> <p>Open <a href="http://localhost:4000/ui/" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://localhost:4000/ui/</a> — that's it.</p> <p>Tech stack</p> <p>Built with Axum + Tokio. No database — just filesystem or S3. AtomicU64 for lock-free metrics, Tower middleware for auth and rate<br> limiting, streaming uploads with async background caching.</p> <p>Links</p> <ul> <li>GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/getnora-io/nora" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/getnora-io/nora</a> </li> <li>Docs: <a href="https://getnora.dev" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://getnora.dev</a> </li> <li>Telegram: <a href="https://t.me/getnora" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://t.me/getnora</a> </li> </ul> <p>MIT licensed, contributions welcome.</p> rust docker devops opensource