Remotes

In the previous sections, we built several packages in our computer, those packages are stored in the local cache, typically ~/.conan/data. Now, you might want to upload them to a conan server for later reuse on another machine, project, or for sharing them.

Conan packages can be uploaded to different remotes previously configured with a name and an URL. The remotes are just servers used as binary repositories that store packages by reference.

There are several possibilities to have a server where to upload packages:

For private development:

Artifactory Community Edition for C/C++: Artifactory Community Edition (CE) for C/C++ is a completely free Artifactory server that implements both Conan and generic repositories. It is the recommended server for companies and teams wanting to host their own private repository. It has a web UI, advanced authentication and permissions, very good performance and scalability, a Rest API, it can host generic artifacts (tarballs, zips, etc). Check Artifactory Community Edition for C/C++ for more information.
Artifactory Pro: Artifactory is the binary repository manager for all major packaging formats. It is the recommended remote type for enterprise and professional package management. Check Artifactory documentation for more information. For comparison between Artifactory editions, check the Artifactory Comparison Matrix.
Conan server: Simple, free and open source, MIT licensed server that comes bundled with the conan client. Check Running conan_server for more information.

For distribution:

Bintray: Bintray is a cloud platform that gives you full control over how you publish, store, promote, and distribute software. You can create binary repositories in Bintray to share conan packages or even create an organization. It is free for open source packages, and the recommended server to distribute them to the C and C++ communities. Check Using Bintray for more information.

Bintray official repositories

Conan official repositories for open source libraries are hosted in Bintray. These repositories are maintained by the Conan team. Currently there are two central repositories:

conan-center: https://bintray.com/conan/conan-center

This repository has moderated, curated and well-maintained packages, and is the place where you can share your packages with the community. To share your package, you can upload it to your own (or your organization’s) repositories and submit an inclusion request to conan-center. Check conan-center guide for more information.

conan-transit: https://bintray.com/conan/conan-transit (DEPRECATED)

Deprecated. Contains mostly outdated packages some of them even not compatible with latest Conan versions, so its usage is discouraged. This repository only exists for backwards compatibility, it is not a default remote in the Conan client and will be completely removed soon. This repository is an exact copy of the old server.conan.io repository at June 11, 2017 08:00 CET. It’s a read-only repository, so you can only download hosted packages.

Conan comes with conan-center repository configured by default. Just in case you want to manually configure this repository you can always add it like this:

$ conan remote add conan-center https://conan.bintray.com

Bintray community repositories

There are some popular community repositories that may be of interest for conan users to retrieve open source packages from. Some of these repositories are not affiliated with the Conan team.

bincrafters : https://bintray.com/bincrafters/public-conan

The Bincrafters team builds binary software packages for the OSS community. This repository contains a wide and growing variety of conan packages from contributors.

Use the following command to add this remote to Conan:
$ conan remote add bincrafters https://api.bintray.com/conan/bincrafters/public-conan

conan-community : https://bintray.com/conan-community/conan

Created by Conan developers, it should be considered as an incubator to mature packages before contacting authors or including them in conan-center. This repository contains work-in-progress packages that may still not work and may not be fully featured.

Use the following command to add this remote to Conan:
$ conan remote add conan-community https://api.bintray.com/conan/conan-community/conan

Note

If you are working in a team, you probably want to use the same remotes everywhere: developer machines, CI. The conan config install command can automatically define the remotes in a conan client, as well as other resources as profiles. Have a look to the conan config install command.