302 responses when downloading metadata vid HTTP not handled correctly

We are trying the following setup:

• Artifactory as a local repository, running in Tomcat
• Apache mod_proxy_ajp forwarding to Tomcat
• HTTPS access to the local repository

When, due to a misconfiguration, Maven tried to fetch data via HTTP rather than HTTPS, the Apache server responded with 302 Found, pointing at the HTTPS location of the data. This worked for .jar and .pom files, but for metadata files, the response was simply saved as it was (an HTML document saying that the data was found elsewhere, not an XML document with metadata). This led to problems later on in the execution of the Maven client.

Proposed solution: either consider 302 errors to be errors, and flag that to the user, or, alternatively, act as a web browser and follow the forward to the correct location of the data.