Maven Repositories

Apache Maven uses repositories to store artifacts. Your dependencies are downloaded from repositories, and artifacts you build are stored (installed, uploaded) into repositories as well. This is one of the fundamental concepts of Maven since its inception: Maven command line tool and Maven Repositories were molded together and developed since the beginning of Maven project itself.

Maven addresses artifacts using artifact coordinates. The artifact coordinates uniquely identify an artifact, but do not say anything about its source or origin. This is where Maven Repositories come into the picture. A repository holds the artifacts in a file system or URL hierarchy laid out according to the Maven Repository Layout. And this is where the circle closes: artifacts, being laid out in defined layout, are consumed and published by Maven.

Sections:

Artifacts
Dependencies
Metadata
Layout
Local Repositories
Remote Repositories