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Migrating from Legacy Plugins - Unified Agent

This article describes the differences between legacy Mend plugins and the Unified Agent along with the benefits of migrating to the Unified Agent.

Overview:

The Unified Agent is a Java command-line tool that scans open source components for vulnerable libraries and source files, as well as license compliance, and uploads the results to the Mend web application. The Unified Agent scans 200+ languages (source and binary files), and seamlessly integrates with repositories, multiple package managers, build tools, containerized environments, and CI/CD tools. The Unified Agent is one tool that can be used to cover all Mend supported languages and package managers, simplifying your Mend scanning processes. To find more information on how to use the Unified Agent, review the document Getting Started with the Unified Agent.

The following legacy Mend plugins have been (or are in the process of being) deprecated in favor of the Unified Agent.

  • Jenkins Plugin

  • Maven Plugin

  • NPM Plugin

  • TeamCity Plugin

Jenkins Plugin

The following chart describes key differences between the Jenkins plugin and the Unified Agent. Note that the Jenkins plugin supports scanning only the package manager Maven and a select group of binary and source files.

For information on integrating the Unified Agent with Jenkins, review the document Jenkins Integration.

Jenkins Plugin

Unified Agent

Package managers

The plugin supports Maven package manager scans.

The Unified Agent supports all package managers supported by Mend.

Binaries

The plugin supports the following binary extensions: jar, aar, dll, tar.gz, egg, whl, rpm, tar.bz2, tgz, deb, gzip, gem, swf, swc

The Unified Agent supports 27 different binary extensions.

Source files

The plugin supports the following source file extensions: c, cc, cp, cpp, cxx, c++, go, goc, h, hpp, hxx, m, mm, c#, cs, csharp, java, js, php, py, rb, swift

The Unified Agent supports over 200 source languages and their file extensions.

Configuration

Not available

Parameters to further configure Maven scans:

maven.ignoredScopes 

maven.ignoreSourceFiles  

maven.ignoreMvnTreeErrors 

maven.aggregateModules

maven.environmentPath 

maven.m2RepositoryPath 

maven.additionalArguments 

maven.projectNameFromDependencyFile

Maven Plugin

The following chart describes key differences between the Maven plugin and Unified Agent.

For information on configuring the Unified Agent for Maven projects, review the document Configuring the Unified Agent for Maven.

Maven Plugin

Unified Agent

Package managers

The plugin supports Maven package manager scans.

The Unified Agent supports all package managers supported by Mend.

Binaries

Not available

The Unified Agent supports 27 different binary extensions.

Source files

Not available

The Unified Agent supports over 200 source languages and their file extensions.

Maven version

The plugin supports Maven 3.0.x, 3.1.x and 3.2.x

The Unified Agent supports Maven versions 3.0.x through 3.8.x.

Configuration

Not available

Parameters to further configure Maven scans:  

maven.ignoreSourceFiles   

maven.environmentPath 

maven.m2RepositoryPath 

maven.additionalArguments 

maven.projectNameFromDependencyFile

NPM Plugin

The following chart describes key differences between the NPM plugin and the Unified Agent.

For information on configuring the Unified Agent for NPM projects, review the document npm and yarn integration

NPM Plugin

Unified Agent

Package managers

The plugin supports NPM package manager scans.

The Unified Agent supports all package managers supported by Mend.

Binaries

Not available

The Unified Agent supports 27 different binary extensions.

Source files

Not available

The Unified Agent supports over 200 source languages and their file extensions.

Requirements

The plugin requires that the command ‘npm install’ be run prior to running the plugin.

The command ‘npm install’ does not need to be run prior to the Unified Agent scan if the parameter ‘npm.runPreStep’ is set to ‘true’ or a package-lock.json file is provided.

Configuration

Not available

Parameters to further configure npm scans:  

npm.ignoreDirectoryPatterns

npm.ignoreSourceFiles 

npm.ignoreScripts 

npm.yarnProject 

npm.identifyByNameAndVersion 

npm.yarn.frozenLockfile 

npm.resolveMainPackageJsonOnly

npm.removeDuplicateDependencies 

npm.resolveAdditionalDependencies

npm.resolveLockFile 

npm.projectNameFromDependencyFile 

npm.resolveGlobalPackages 

TeamCity Plugin

The following chart describes key differences between the TeamCity plugin and the Unified Agent.

For information on integrating the Unified Agent with TeamCity, review the document TeamCity Integration.

TeamCity Plugin

Unified Agent

Package managers

The plugin supports Maven, Ant or Script runner types.

The Unified Agent supports all package managers supported by Mend.

Binaries

Not available

The Unified Agent supports 27 different binary extensions.

Source files

Not available

The Unified Agent supports over 200 source languages and their file extensions.

Configuration

Not available

Parameters to further configure TeamCity scans:

maven.ignoredScopes 

maven.ignoreSourceFiles  

maven.ignoreMvnTreeErrors 

maven.aggregateModules

maven.environmentPath 

maven.m2RepositoryPath 

maven.additionalArguments 

maven.projectNameFromDependencyFile 

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