diff --git a/dev-tools/validate-maven-repository.py b/dev-tools/validate-maven-repository.py
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+# Licensed to Elasticsearch under one or more contributor
+# license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
+# this work for additional information regarding copyright
+# ownership. Elasticsearch licenses this file to you under
+# the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may
+# not use this file except in compliance  with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
+# software distributed under the License is distributed on
+# an 'AS IS' BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND,
+# either express or implied. See the License for the specific
+# language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
+
+# Helper python script to check if a sonatype staging repo contains
+# all the required files compared to a local repository
+#
+# The script does the following steps
+#
+# 1. Scans the local maven repo for all files in /org/elasticsearch
+# 2. Opens a HTTP connection to the staging repo
+# 3. Executes a HEAD request for each file found in step one
+# 4. Compares the content-length response header with the real file size
+# 5. Return an error if those two numbers differ
+#
+# A pre requirement to run this, is to find out via the oss.sonatype.org web UI, how that repo is named
+# - After logging in you go to 'Staging repositories' and search for the one you just created
+# - Click into the `Content` tab
+# - Open any artifact (not a directory)
+# - Copy the link of `Repository Path` on the right and reuse that part of the URL
+#
+# Alternatively you can just use the name of the repository and reuse the rest (ie. the repository
+# named for the example below would have been named orgelasticsearch-1012)
+#
+#
+# Example call
+#   python dev-tools/validate-maven-repository.py /path/to/repo/org/elasticsearch/ \
+#          https://oss.sonatype.org/service/local/repositories/orgelasticsearch-1012/content/org/elasticsearch
+
+import sys
+import os
+import httplib
+import urlparse
+import re
+
+# Draw a simple progress bar, a couple of hundred HEAD requests might take a while
+# Note, when drawing this, it uses the carriage return character, so you should not
+# write anything in between
+def drawProgressBar(percent, barLen = 40):
+    sys.stdout.write("\r")
+    progress = ""
+    for i in range(barLen):
+        if i < int(barLen * percent):
+            progress += "="
+        else:
+            progress += " "
+    sys.stdout.write("[ %s ] %.2f%%" % (progress, percent * 100))
+    sys.stdout.flush()
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+  if len(sys.argv) != 3:
+    print 'Usage: %s <localRep> <stagingRepo> [user:pass]' % (sys.argv[0])
+    print ''
+    print 'Example: %s /tmp/my-maven-repo/org/elasticsearch https://oss.sonatype.org/service/local/repositories/orgelasticsearch-1012/content/org/elasticsearch' % (sys.argv[0])
+  else:
+    sys.argv[1] = re.sub('/$', '', sys.argv[1])
+    sys.argv[2] = re.sub('/$', '', sys.argv[2])
+
+    localMavenRepo = sys.argv[1]
+    endpoint = sys.argv[2]
+
+    filesToCheck = []
+    foundSignedFiles = False
+
+    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(localMavenRepo):
+      for file in files:
+        # no metadata files (they get renamed from maven-metadata-local.xml to maven-metadata.xml while deploying)
+        # no .properties and .repositories files (they dont get uploaded)
+        if not file.startswith('maven-metadata') and not file.endswith('.properties') and not file.endswith('.repositories'):
+          filesToCheck.append(os.path.join(root, file))
+        if file.endswith('.asc'):
+          foundSignedFiles = True
+
+    print "Need to check %i files" % len(filesToCheck)
+    if not foundSignedFiles:
+      print '### Warning: No signed .asc files found'
+
+    # set up http
+    parsed_uri = urlparse.urlparse(endpoint)
+    domain = parsed_uri.netloc
+    if parsed_uri.scheme == 'https':
+      conn = httplib.HTTPSConnection(domain)
+    else:
+      conn = httplib.HTTPConnection(domain)
+    #conn.set_debuglevel(5)
+
+    drawProgressBar(0)
+    errors = []
+    for idx, file in enumerate(filesToCheck):
+      request_uri = parsed_uri.path + file[len(localMavenRepo):]
+      conn.request("HEAD", request_uri)
+      res = conn.getresponse()
+      res.read() # useless call for head, but prevents httplib.ResponseNotReady raise
+
+      absolute_url = parsed_uri.scheme + '://' + parsed_uri.netloc + request_uri
+      if res.status == 200:
+        content_length = res.getheader('content-length')
+        local_file_size = os.path.getsize(file)
+        if int(content_length) != int(local_file_size):
+          errors.append('LENGTH MISMATCH:   %s differs in size. local %s <=> %s remote' % (absolute_url, content_length, local_file_size))
+      elif res.status == 404:
+        errors.append('MISSING:           %s' % absolute_url)
+      elif res.status == 301 or res.status == 302:
+        errors.append('REDIRECT:          %s to %s' % (absolute_url, res.getheader('location')))
+      else:
+        errors.append('ERROR:             %s http response: %s %s' %(absolute_url, res.status, res.reason))
+
+      # update progressbar at the end
+      drawProgressBar((idx+1)/float(len(filesToCheck)))
+
+    print
+
+    if len(errors) != 0:
+      print 'The following errors occured (%s out of %s files)' % (len(errors), len(filesToCheck))
+      print
+      for error in errors:
+        print error
+      sys.exit(-1)