With regards to network traffic, I don’t think that target files are any better or worse than repositories with layout p2 in the POM.
For having p2 implement an update policy like Maven, there is only an open
enhancement request [1] but nothing is implemented.
What does work is offline mode. You’d need to run without -o though every now and then if the reference p2 repositories change.
Regards
Tobias
[1]
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=337022
From: tycho-user-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:tycho-user-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Jeff MAURY
Sent: Mittwoch, 24. April 2013 22:59
To: Tycho user list
Subject: Re: [tycho-user] Can Tycho Compute target platform from local files instead of using nexus?
The best way to do in Tycho is to use a target file and the target file will be referencing your Nexus P2 repository. I think this make no big difference except that if you use target file, then the content
and index of the P2 repositories used by this target file will be cached somewhere in the Maven repository.
Jeff