What is Maven artifact ?

Question

Hi,

I am trying to understand Maven a little.

Can someone please explain what is an artifact and why does Maven need them?

Thank you, Maxim.

Answer 1

An artifact is a JAR or something that you store in a repository. Maven gets them out and builds your code.

Answer 2

To maven, the build process is arranged as a set of artifacts. Artifacts include:

1. The plugins that make up Maven itself.
2. Dependencies that your code depends on.
3. Anything that your build produces that can, in turn be consumed by something else.

Artifacts live in repositories.

Answer 3

In general software terms, an "artifact" is something produced by the software development process, whether it be software related documentation or an executable file.

In Maven terminology, the artifact is the resulting output of the maven build, generally a jar or war or other executable. Artifacts in maven are identified by a coordinate system of groupId, artifactId, and version. Maven uses the groupId, artifactId, and version to identify dependencies (usually other jar files) needed to build and run your code.

Answer 4

An artifact is a file, usually a JAR, that gets deployed to a Maven repository.

A Maven build produces one or more artifacts, such as a compiled JAR and a "sources" JAR.

Each artifact has a group ID (usually a reversed domain name, like com.example.foo), an artifact ID (just a name), and a version string. The three together uniquely identify the artifact.

A project's dependencies are specified as artifacts.